ISTANBUL - State Minister Kursad Tuzmen said on Wednesday that they aimed to make bilateral trade volume between Turkey and Russia more balanced and increase it to ten billion U.S. dollars.
Making a speech during the 10th joint meeting of Turkish-Russian Business Council, Tuzmen gave information about Turkish economy and said that they aimed to export worth of 45 billion dollars this year.
Noting that Russian Federation was one of the most important countries for Turkey, Tuzmen said that they planned to make real strategical partnership with Russia, adding that last year's trade volume worth of five billion dollars would be increased to nearly 6.5 billion dollars in the end of this year.
Tuzmen said that it was necessary to establish a free trade zone between Turkey and Russia to reach bigger targets in trade between two countries. He added that they started activities at the moment regarding the issue and they thought of signing an economic and commercial partnership and cooperation agreement rapidly.
Noting that amoung of natural gas that Turkey would buy from Russian federation within existing natural gas agreements would increase in coming years, Tuzmen said that foreign trade deficit would be very high if special measures that would ease entrance of Turkish goods to Russian market would not be taken.
Touching on shuttle trade, Tuzmen said that the dimension of shuttle trade between two countries was getting narrow and when new customs law would go into effect in Russia next year, this volume would be narrower.
(GC-AY) 15.10.2003