Turkish - Romanian ties are set to flourish further

In turn, Hamdi Demirel, Vice president for Investment and Industry with TIAD, the Turkish Businessmen’s Association, emphasized that investors should focus more on regional opportunities. At the same time, Demirel said the current level of economic cooperation between the two countries was much too low compared to the existing potential. “The bilateral commercial activities between Turkey and Romania are insufficient. We should be ashamed of ourselves. They only represent about 3.5 per cent of total imports and exports. Ten per cent of our exports should go to Romania and 15 per cent of Romania’s exports should go to Turkey. A bilateral trade level of 5.7 billion Euro is not enough. We want to see Romania become one of our top trading partners. Decision makers should get together and find the ways to increase the bilateral import and export portfolio,” said Demirel. Referring to the Turkish direct investments in Romania, Demirel said the official figure of 533 million Euro did offer an accurate picture of the actual Turkish involvement in the local economy, the total Turkish investments amounting to nearly one billion Euro at the end of 2010.
Demirel also spoke about TIAD’s activity in Romania and specified that the organization had 183 members, which accounted for some 90 per cent of the entire share capital held by Turkish companies. “TIAD seeks to increase trade, direct investments and commercial relations between Turkey and Romania. To achieve that we offer assistance free of charge to anyone who wants to do business in Romania. We also offer assistance to Romanian companies looking for business partners in Turkey,” he said.       
Ilker Ozdemir, Transaction Banking and ADC Director, Garanti Bank, took the opportunity to speak about the bank’s activities in Romania and specified that it currently had 80 branches and 1.5 billion Euro in assets.