Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek made important statements on the economic agenda on NTV after his Gulf tour.
The highlights of Minister Şimşek’s statements regarding the Gulf tour are as follows:
“I have a very different approach to the Gulf. I think this will be more beneficial. Direct investments from there are always important. What is important here is what we can do according to the principle of complementarity for the benefit of both sides. I met with nearly 250 leading senior executives in Qatar. I had very important meetings. I told them to come and be a part of it. The question mark in their minds is lira. It is very volatile. Exchange rates are fixed there. As we improve macro financial stability, there will be tremendous interest there. They have surplus funds.”
“I will meet the US treasury secretary”
IMF-World Bank meetings are events. Policy makers and investors meet with the leaders who come there. We will have a very busy few days. I will meet with the US Treasury Secretary. There are ministers from other countries who have requested meetings. We will meet with many banks. We are explaining the Turkish economy, they are our major stakeholders. We keep the relations warm all the time. There are very serious fund flows. We will continue intensive dialogs. We will participate in the events of all investment banks. We will have up to 15 meetings a day. We will spend 5-6 days in the US. Decline in the current account deficit The current account deficit is Turkey’s soft underbelly. Last year, before the program, the current account deficit was very high. In the conjuncture of that period, the market saw it at 6 percent of national income. We set an ambitious target to reduce it to 3 percent in our first year. At this point, the current account deficit has fallen below 1 percent. If there were no conflicts in our region, the current account deficit would probably be in balance. We want to bring the current account deficit permanently below 2.5 or 2 percent. We want to solve Turkey’s external fragility permanently. In December, especially under the leadership of the Ministry of Industry, we identified 284 products that account for more than half of Turkey’s foreign trade deficit. We invited companies from Turkey and around the world that can do these jobs with a 10-year term and a 2-year non-repayable loan. We want to attract investments in production in the next few years.