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Terzioglu: Turkey and United States Should Boost Bilateral Trade

15 April 2010 03:17 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Evaluating attendance of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12-13, Chairman of Turkish-American Business Association (TABA/AmCham) Ugur Terzioglu stressed that the visit is an important step to relieve the stain in Turkish-American relations and said, â€œU.S. President Barack Obama, who hosts the Nuclear Security Summit, and Prime Minister Erdogan will meet within the frames of the summit, APA reports quoting turkishny.com web-page. We are hopeful that leaders can make steps towards resettlement of the problems that cause strains in the relations between two countries.â€
Underscoring the importance of focusing on bilateral trade and investment, Ugur Terzioglu said, â€œUnited States and Turkey are strategical partners. We hope that this partnership will not be damaged and strong ties between two countries will develop further through model partnership, including important developments in commercial relations. With respect to our governmentâ€™s politics and our national interests, we are hopeful that political clouds between Turkey and US will be dissipated and trade and investment will continue to progress by all means.â€
Reminding that volume of trade between Turkey and U.S. reached record high $15.082 million in 2008, Terzioglu said, â€œBut the slow down in the global trade in recent years affected also the commercial relations between Turkey and US, and trade statistics for the year 2009 were relatively low. Total volume of trade in the first 7 months of 2009 was $5.865 million, which was 34.4% less then previous yearâ€™s statistic. Turkish-American commercial relations have the potential for better statistics to be achieved. Turkish-American commercial relations mostly based on the trade between two states... But that started to change. Turkey serves as a bridge for U.S. companies to reach Middle East and Eurasia marketsâ€¦ and U.S. companises are aware of that.â€
Stating that Turkeyâ€™s exports have been increasing in the last 10 years while the U.S. share in Turkeyâ€™s exports is decreasing, Terzioglu said, â€œAlthough Turkeyâ€™s exports have increased to $130 billion from $30 billion in 10 years, U.S. share in Turkeyâ€™s exports shrinked to 3% from 10%. These statistics prove that there is great potential for bilateral trade and investment between Turkey and United States. The concept of â€œmodel partnershipâ€ that became concrete in the meeting between Prime Minister Erdogan and U.S. President Barack Obama has a great importance for activating this commercial potential. Turkish-American trade can be doubled via model partnership.â€