Turk businessmen keen on shipbuilding in PH – Lopez
Bilateral trade expansion
Turkish businessmen are looking for locations for shipbuilding operation for RORO ships in the Philippines as part of their exploration for business opportunities in the country as both countries target to double trade and investment levels in two to three years.
This was divulged to Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon M. Lopez, who visited Turkey recently to sign the Joint Committee on Economic and Trade Cooperation (JCETC) with Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli to finally effect bilateral trade and investment promotion. Lopez is now in Budapest for another meeting with Hungary’s Trade minister, business chambers, and companies.
Aside from shipbuilding, other areas of interest by Turkish businessmen include agri processing, textile manufacturing, low cost housing, pharmaceuticals, education, film production and two-way tour packages.
They also indicated providing Islamic financing for the Marawi rehab program, interest free and shall look at locating some manufacturing activities in the area to immediately provide jobs.
While in Turkey, Lopez also met with the Turkish- Philippines Business Chamber, the Turkey Contractors Association and with individual companies willing to explore the setting up of manufacturing operations in the Philippines.
Lopez said that the President of the Turkish-Phil Business Chamber Ilkem Sahin is bullish on exploring all these opportunities in the Philippines committing to invest and buy more Philippine products. He has direct mandate from Turkey President Erdogan to strengthen business ties with the Philippines.
“We target to double our trade and investment in 2-3 years,” he said noting the still low level of investments and trade in both countries. The Turkish business leader has already committed to lead a business mission to the Philippines on March 19-22 this year.
Bilateral trade and investment relation between the Philippines and Turkey has remained highly undertapped perhaps due to unfamiliarity and limited interaction between the respective business sectors.
“There a lot of opportunities cited due to similarities in the strategy of the two government to widen and diversify trade and investment partners,” he said noting that the traditional partners of Turkey have been its neighboring countries Libya, Iraq, Syria, Russia, and former states of Russia. But current issues in these countries affected their businesses and thus they have started also to look at Asia and Asean, said Lopez.
At the same time, Lopez noted of various industry complementation, considering the Philippines’ strength on agri-based products, design-oriented garments, electronics, IT business process outsourcing, auto and aero space parts, infra development, tourism development.
For its part, Turkey is good and competitive in textiles, energy and power development, shipbuilding, low cost housing, construction, defense equipment, Islamic financing, and halal manufacturing.