Raphael John-Lall

Türkiye’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Bengü Yiğit­gü­den, has in­vit­ed T&T’s busi­ness sec­tor to build com­mer­cial ties with Türkiye, one of the world’s largest economies by Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP).

“I hope very much that this we­bi­nar brings busi­ness peo­ple from T&T and Türkiye clos­er. Türkiye is a mem­ber of the G-20, Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD), and oth­er fo­ra and has a lib­er­al eco­nom­ic mod­el. Türkiye’s and T&T’s diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions date back to 1972 and last year we cel­e­brat­ed our 50th year. There are no agree­ments yet re­lat­ed to the econ­o­my or trade. The on­ly agree­ment T&T and Türkiye have is about visas. Cit­i­zens of both coun­tries can vis­it each oth­er with­out a visa and stay up to 90 days. ”

Yiğit­gü­den spoke last Wednes­day at a we­bi­nar host­ed by the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) on “Do­ing Busi­ness with the World Se­ries” where Türkiye’s busi­ness sec­tor was high­light­ed.

Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ál­varo Sánchez Cordero who spoke dur­ing the ques­tion-and-an­swer seg­ment of the we­bi­nar point­ed out that trav­el for busi­ness peo­ple be­tween Türkiye and T&T should be much eas­i­er now as Türkiye and Venezuela have di­rect flights and Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) just es­tab­lished di­rect flights be­tween Pi­ar­co and Cara­cas.

This means a busi­nessper­son or some­one trav­el­ling for leisure can trav­el to Cara­cas and then take an­oth­er flight to Türkiye.

In­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion

Apart from her speech at the we­bi­nar, in a state­ment to the Busi­ness Guardian, Yiğit­gü­den spoke about the pos­i­tive as­pects of Türkiye’s econ­o­my and al­so the chal­lenges.

Among the coun­try’s chal­lenges is its high rate of in­fla­tion. In 2022, the coun­try’s in­fla­tion rate hit 85 per­cent, which was among the high­est rate among de­vel­oped coun­tries last year. For 2023, the Turk­ish Cen­tral Bank has for­cast an in­fla­tion rate of 22.3 per cent.

“In re­cent years the whole world, in­clud­ing de­vel­oped coun­tries, is suf­fer­ing from the prob­lem of high in­fla­tion.

Both the pan­dem­ic and the Rus­sia-Ukraine war have dis­rupt­ed the sup­ply chain, cre­at­ed sup­ply-side prob­lems and in­creased en­er­gy and in­put costs. Pro­duc­tion and job loss­es and health prob­lems caused by the pan­dem­ic had ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on bud­gets.

The Gov­ern­ment is us­ing ef­fec­tive fis­cal and mon­e­tary poli­cies to low­er in­fla­tion. Fur­ther­more, salaries are in­creased to en­able house­holds to cope with ris­ing prices. Ac­cord­ing to the Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice in re­cent months there has been progress in low­er­ing prices. Sure­ly these ef­forts will to con­tin­ue to take the in­fla­tion un­der con­trol,” she said.

Speak­ing about the pos­i­tive as­pects of the Turk­ish econ­o­my, the am­bas­sador said: “Türkiye is an im­por­tant cen­tre of at­trac­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors with its large pro­duc­tion po­ten­tial, ad­vanced lo­gis­tics in­fra­struc­ture, com­pre­hen­sive in­cen­tive pro­grammes, and a well-de­vel­oped bank­ing sec­tor. Strong mar­ket fun­da­men­tals, such as a young and dy­nam­ic pop­u­la­tion, a well-ed­u­cat­ed work­force have all helped trans­form Türkiye in­to one of the fastest grow­ing economies in the world.”

She de­scribed how Türkiye be­came one of the world’s largest economies.

“The Turk­ish econ­o­my de­vel­oped steadi­ly af­ter the 1980s. Türkiye be­came a mem­ber of G20. A sol­id macro­eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy, pru­dent fis­cal poli­cies, and ma­jor struc­tur­al re­forms have all con­tributed to the in­te­gra­tion of Türkiye’s econ­o­my in­to the glob­alised world while al­so trans­form­ing the coun­try in­to one of the ma­jor re­cip­i­ents of For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ment (FDI) in its re­gion. The made re­forms have in­creased the role of the pri­vate sec­tor in the econ­o­my, en­hanced the ef­fi­cien­cy and re­silien­cy of the fi­nan­cial sec­tor, and placed pub­lic fi­nance on a more sol­id foun­da­tion.”

She al­so pre­sent­ed some of the coun­try’s strong macro­eco­nom­ic sta­tis­tics.

“The re­forms al­so strength­ened the macro­eco­nom­ic fun­da­men­tals of the coun­try, al­low­ing the econ­o­my to grow an­nu­al re­al GDP. Dur­ing 2003-2022 pe­ri­od, the av­er­age an­nu­al growth rate was 5.4 per cent. In 2022, the econ­o­my ex­pand­ed by 5.6 per cent.”

She added that the Turk­ish pri­vate sec­tor al­ready has a pres­ence in the Caribbean and is look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T as well as the rest of the re­gion.

“I know that Turk­ish busi­ness­men are in­ter­est­ed in fea­si­ble projects in T&T as well. As an ex­am­ple, I can men­tion a Turk­ish en­er­gy com­pa­ny that has re­cent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a bid of the T&T Gov­ern­ment.”

She list­ed dif­fer­ent ar­eas that can be in­vest­ed in:

“T&T has on­go­ing in­fra­struc­ture projects, in­clud­ing road con­struc­tion, air­port ex­pan­sion, and hous­ing de­vel­op­ments. Our com­pa­nies could ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pate in these projects and con­tribute with their ex­per­tise. T&T has a de­vel­op­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas such as chem­i­cals, plas­tics and food pro­cess­ing. Turk­ish in­vestors could con­sid­er es­tab­lish­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties or part­ner­ing with lo­cal com­pa­nies in these and oth­er sec­tors. Agro-pro­cess­ing or agri­cul­tur­al tech­nolo­gies could al­so be an area of co­op­er­a­tion.”

She al­so praised T&T busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions for be­ing far-sight­ed and want­i­ng to ex­plore new op­por­tu­ni­ties in coun­tries like Türkiye

“What Türkiye, the Caribbean and T&T have to of­fer in ser­vices and goods has to be pro­mot­ed. This would sure­ly at­tract more in­vest­ments to/from Türkiye and oth­er coun­tries. In this con­text, I am very pleased with the ini­tia­tive of the TTC­SI to start the ‘Do­ing Busi­ness with the World Se­ries.’ In­clud­ing Türkiye in this ini­tia­tive al­lowed us to give in­for­ma­tion about the busi­ness cir­cles of our coun­try and its econ­o­my. Once we have more in­for­ma­tion about each oth­er, trade and in­vest­ments will sure­ly in­crease.”

Trade op­por­tu­ni­ties

Pres­i­dent of the TTC­SI, Mark Edghill who al­so spoke at the we­bi­nar said that trade ties be­tween the coun­tries are strong and must con­tin­ue to grow.

Ac­cord­ing to trade da­ta he gave, in 2019, bi­lat­er­al trade be­tween the two coun­tries was at US$120.8 mil­lion. In that year, Türkiye’s ex­ports to T&T were val­ued at US$68.4 mil­lion, while that coun­try had im­port­ed some US$52.4 mil­lion worth of goods and ser­vices from T&T.

He added that dur­ing 2021, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Com­trade data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade, T&T’s im­ports from Türkiye stood at US$89.92 mil­lion.

Among the items im­port­ed were iron and steel, at al­most US$62 mil­lion; with just un­der US$4 mil­lion in elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic equip­ment and US $4.31 mil­lion in salt, sul­phur, earth, stone, plas­ter, lime and ce­ment.

Us­ing, ad­di­tion­al da­ta from Com­trade, he high­light­ed that T&T’s ex­ports to Türkiye in 2021 stood at US $3.12 mil­lion. The bulk of items ex­port­ed were from the petro­chem­i­cals sec­tor and in­clud­ed or­gan­ic and in­or­gan­ic chem­i­cals, min­er­al fu­els, oils and dis­til­la­tion prod­ucts, among oth­ers.

“As you can dis­cern from the fig­ures I have shared with you, trade be­tween our coun­tries is be­gin­ning to pick up once more, now that we are see­ing the light af­ter the dark days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. In ad­di­tion, past da­ta shows a fo­cus on en­er­gy and man­u­fac­tur­ing. Go­ing in­to the fu­ture, we at TTC­SI hope to see trade in ser­vices take their place right up there with those oth­er sec­tors,” he said.

He al­so said as of 2023, Türkiye’s econ­o­my is the 19th largest in the world by nom­i­nal GDP.

“It is a tril­lion-dol­lar econ­o­my. Türkiye’s ser­vices sec­tor con­sti­tut­ed 37.9 per cent of to­tal em­ploy­ment in 2021. Cur­rent­ly, its ex­ports of goods and ser­vices as per­cent­age of GDP are at 28.57 per cent, while its im­ports of goods and ser­vices as per­cent­age of GDP are at 32.33 per cent. The val­ue of both these mar­kets runs in­to the tril­lions of US dol­lars.”

He list­ed lo­gis­tics and trans­port, film and an­i­ma­tion, tourism, health and en­er­gy as sec­tors that are boom­ing and open to in­vest­ment.

Free trade pact need­ed

Yiğit­gü­den added that the Turk­ish pri­vate sec­tor al­ready has a pres­ence in the Caribbean and is look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T as well as the rest of the re­gion.

De­spite a lo­cal com­pa­ny tak­ing the de­ci­sion to stop im­port­ing Turk­ish ce­ment in Ju­ly 2021, she said busi­ness will con­tin­ue be­tween both coun­tries.

“I do not have any fig­ures, yet I know that Türkiye is still ex­port­ing ce­ment to the re­gion. As far as I know, the T&T Gov­ern­ment and a com­pa­ny im­port­ing ce­ment had some le­gal is­sues, which end­ed up at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice. The Gov­ern­ment had al­so con­sult­ed the Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (COT­ED) op­er­at­ing with­in Cari­com. In the end, the tar­iff was in­creased to a very high lev­el. This might have led the com­pa­ny to stop im­port­ing ce­ment from Türkiye.

“In this con­text, I would like to men­tion that for a very long time now, Türkiye has been ask­ing Cari­com to make arrange­ments for a Free Trade Agree­ment (FTA). This would have helped to avoid prob­lems as men­tioned above. Yet, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we could not make any progress re­gard­ing an FTA.”

She added there are oth­er ar­eas that will ben­e­fit both coun­tries.

“I know that Turk­ish busi­ness­men are in­ter­est­ed in fea­si­ble projects in T&T as well. As an ex­am­ple I can men­tion a Turk­ish en­er­gy com­pa­ny which has re­cent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a bid of the T&T Gov­ern­ment.”