Foreign Trade Undersecretary Says They Will Focus On Signing Free Trade Agreement With Syria During Jec Meeting

ANKARA - Foreign Trade Undersecretary Tuncer Kayalar said on Thursday that the most important item of Turkish-Syrian Joint Economic Commission (JEC) meeting would be efforts to sign free trade agreement with Syria.
The JEC meeting between Turkey and Syria will begin in Ankara on Monday.
The technical team meeting between Turkey and Syria was held in Foreign Trade Undersecretariat the same day.
Addressing the opening remarks of the meeting, Kayalar emphasized that JEC sixth term meeting was important for development of commercial cooperation between Turkey and Syria.
Kayalar said that Turkish government was in an effort to increase its trade with all regional countries, particularly Syria.
Their main target was to turn their strategy to improve cooperation with neighbor and surrounding countries into a trade partnership, Kayalar noted.
Stating that they attached a special importance to Syria within the scope of their strategy, Kayalar said that their goal was to free trade of goods and services as much as possible and establish lasting and broad economic relations.
Touching on trade volume between Turkey and Syria, Kayalar said that the trade volume was around 650-750 million U.S. dollars since 1997.
Kayalar pointed out that trade volume did not exceed 762 million U.S. dollars despite the efforts exerted in the last two years and expressed hoped that reciprocal trade would have a more balanced structure.
They proposed to hold JEC meeting in four sub-committees, Kayalar noted.
Kayalar stated that one of the sub-committees named ''commercial committee'' should take up future cooperation projects.
(BRC-AÖ) 24.07.2003