Turkey to become EBRD’s 2nd biggest investment site
2012-09-14 12:36:27
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) expects to invest at least 1 billion euros ($1.3 bln) in Turkey next year and sees growing demand for financing, particularly from the renewable energy and agribusiness sectors.
EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti said Turkey, which has benefited from increased foreign investment flows in recent years, was set to overtake Ukraine and become the bank’s second biggest investment destination by volume after Russia.
“We’re pretty confident we’ll spend at least another billion (euros) here next year ... I’ll be surprised and upset if we didn’t manage that,” Chakrabarti told a roundtable with journalists late on Sept. 11.
“There’s demand beyond a billion a year, the pipeline is strong and growing, but we are only a few years into our relations,” he said, noting it would be partly up to the bank’s shareholders whether to expand the programme further.
The EBRD was set up in 1991 to invest in the ex-Communist states of eastern Europe where it has played an influential role in transforming sectors ranging from banking to telecoms.
It started operations in Turkey in 2009 and has invested around 2 billion euros since then, much of it in small and medium-sized companies in remote regions which struggled to gain access to funding during the financial crisis.