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Turkey targets $2.3bn Iraq exports
Turkey aims to increase its exports to Iraq to $2.3 billion in 2005 from a projected $1.8 billion this year, Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen said.
He said Ankara targeted a total trade volume of $4 billion between the two countries next year.
Turkey is determined to increase trade with Iraq despite many Turkish truck drivers being kidnapped and some being killed there by insurgents who target them for supplying goods and fuel to US military bases.
In the first 10 months of this year, Turkey exported $1.5 billion worth of goods to Iraq.
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.
'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 said.
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 said. -Reuters
Source : www.tradearabia.com
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