Turkey targets $2 billion in exports to Iraq (08/11/04)

Turkey is aiming to increase its exports to Iraq to $2.3 billion in 2005 from a projected $1.8 billion this year, the country's trade minister Kursad Tuzmen has said. He said that Ankara had targeted a total trade volume of $4 billion between the two countries next year.

Turkey is determined to increase trade with Iraq, having exported $1.5 billion worth of goods there in the first 10 months of this year. Tuzmen told a meeting of a Turkish-Iraqi economic commission that the medium-term target was to raise the trade volume between the two countries to $8 billion.

Turkish Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen

"In order to reach these targets we must rapidly create solutions to the problems which block our bilateral trade and we must revise the legal framework of our relationship," he said. The most important problem was the bottleneck in trucks that occurs at Habur, the only border crossing point between Turkey and Iraq, he added.

The border crossing has the capacity for the passage of 4,000 vehicles a day, but drivers often have to wait days there due to the frequent build-up of trucks. Those delays will increase in the coming months due to modernisation work being carried out according to the build-operate-transfer model, the minister said.

He called for a second border crossing to be opened elsewhere in the region at Ovakoy, a move which has already won approval but has yet to be put into practice. Tuzmen said a train line between Gaziantep and Baghdad should be revived as part of other steps to increase the trade volume.

In order to protect truck drivers, security posts should be set up along the main road between the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and Baghdad, parking areas should be made secure and protection should be given to convoys, he concluded.

Source: Reuters