Turkey Financial News

Posted by meb at February 19th, 2009

Five companies, including U.S. auto parts giant Gates, Turkish-Dutch joint venture Cappadocia Textile and Italian automotive electronics giant Eldor have announced plans to build plants in Turkey’s Aegean province of Izmir before the end of 2010.

The new investments are expected to create 3,000 new job opportunities, the Anatolian Agency reported.

Turkey has started to receive offers of major investments after tax incentives were resumed and promotional activities took place overseas, the president of the Executive Board of the Aegean Free Zone Development and Operating Company (ESBAS), Kaya Tuncer, told to the agency. (more…)

Posted by meb at February 9th, 2009

İstanbul Atatürk Airport saw the highest increase in air traffic in Europe in 2008, according to a recent report prepared by Eurocontrol, the European organization for the safety of air navigation. Becoming the 10th busiest airport in Europe, air traffic at the İstanbul airport increased by 5 percent in 2008 over the previous year.

“İstanbul Atatürk Airport is also scheduled to grow rapidly over the coming years. The combination of this growth and the continuing strength of growth trends in Turkey, in particular the growth of tourism, mean that around 2010, Istanbul will join the limited number of airports where capacity is restricting growth,” the report stated. (more…)

Posted by meb at February 9th, 2009

Turkish automotive sector exports to EU-member states declined 56.1 percent to $882.6 million in January 2009 compared to the same period in 2008, the Anatolian Agency reported citing Uludag Exporters’ Association figures.

Turkey’s automotive exports to European Union countries, with the exclusion of Malta and Latvia, fell in the same term, the figures revealed.

Exports to EU-member states fell 60.5 percent to $648.9 million, while exports to Spain were down 91.7 percent to $10 million and exports to Romania declined 76 percent to $21 million. In January 2007, exports to Spain reached $132 million and exports to Romania stood at $92 million. (more…)

Posted by meb at February 5th, 2009

A total of 130 workers resigned from the Hyundai Assan plant at Kocaeli, south of Istanbul, receiving full compensation pay plus two months worth of extra salary, in accordance with the company’s cost-cutting precautions.
“To survive, we are trying to cut costs,” said Kaan Bakırcıoğlu, Hyundai Assan’s Public Relations Chief. “We have contract workers at the factory. Their contracts were not renewed,” he told Anatolia News Agency. “Plus, 130 workers quit their jobs and received full compensation. They also received two months worth of salary as a bonus. We offered this chance to those who needed money.” (more…)

Posted by meb at January 19th, 2009

The Turkish automotive sector is taking an especially hard beating in the present global financial turbulence, with exports in the sector, long considered the locomotive of Turkish exports, shrinking by almost 70 percent in the first two weeks of January over the same period last year.

From Jan. 1 to Jan. 15 the country exported units totaling $250.9 million, down from $818.9 million last year.

Plummeting demand in international markets has led to closings in all of the sector’s main producers. Ford Otosan, OYAK Renault and Tofaş announced 12-day cuts in production for the month of January in response to falling demand. (more…)

Posted by meb at January 13th, 2009

A German automotive supplier will soon launch a greenfield investment in Turkey, spending 15 million euros despite the darkening outlook in the Turkish automotive industry, which is suffering from a contraction in domestic and international sales.

C. Rob. Hammerstein GmbH & Co. KG (CRH), based in Solingen, Germany, and the Coordination Council for the Improvement of the Investment Environment (YOİKK) announced in a joint statement yesterday that a CRH facility will be built in Gebze, Kocaeli, and that it will employ 400 workers once finished. (more…)

Posted by meb at January 13th, 2009

A total of 54,700 automotive workers lost their jobs from the Turkish sector’s top producing province of Bursa in 2008, a labor union representative told Anatolian Agency on Tuesday.

Turkish automakers cut 54,700 jobs in leading Bursa province in 2008

The job cuts that are mainly due to the rising fall in domestic and foreign demand which intensified in the last quarter, has reached a level of concern, Mehmet Kanca, representative of Turk-Is labor union said.

“We are facing figures which exceed our estimations… A total of 5,683 workers were laid-off in October, while this figures were 9,283 in November and 9,397 workers in December,” Kanca said adding that the cumulative job cuts in the last quarter of 2008 registered as much as 24,368.

Kanca, also said that the figures resulted in a monthly average of 4,725 lost jobs, a level which was concerning.

The Turkish subsidiaries of Italian Fiat and French Renault have production facilities in Bursa province, as well as Germany’s Bosch, supplier of diesel engine technologies to several automakers. More than 80 percent of the automotive output in the province is exported.

Kanca also said that the expectation for 2009 was no better than in 2008 and urged for measures which would particularly protect purchasing power and boost domestic demand.

“Excise tax and value added tax (VAT) should be either removed or reduced to a minimum… Incentives should be given to purchasing locally produced vehicles.”

Recent economic data has shown the financial crisis hitting Turkey hard — economic growth hit a six-year low in the third quarter, when gross domestic product expanded just 0.5 percent year-on-year. (more…)

Posted by meb at January 8th, 2009

The Turkish domestic market for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) shrunk by 17 percent last year, from 594,762 individual recorded sales in 2007 to 494,023 in 2008.

According to statistics provided by the Automotive Distributors’ Association (ODD), car sales in 2008 decreased to 305,998, a drop of 14.4 percent compared to 2007. The total sales of LCVs dropped also, down to 188,025 with a 20.8 percent fall on 2007.

In December 2008, the total number of sales within the Turkish automotive market was 42,078 — 25,879 were cars and 16,199 were LCVs. Car sales for December 2008 decreased by 58 percent compared to December 2007 while the decrease in demand for LCVs was almost identical, 59 percent, in the same period. (more…)