Yeni Safak – In a drive to further deepen its economic and commercial ties with Asian economies, Türkiye has made considerable progress in boosting trade with South Korea and Japan. The first step towards an economic cooperation agreement with Japan has been taken while the existing free trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and Türkiye will soon cover investment and services sectors.
“Türkiye and Japan have completed the technical talks to establish bilateral economic cooperation and negotiations for the agreement will begin by the end of this year”, Türkiye’s Minister of Economy, Nihat Zeybekci, said at the Turkish-Japanese Business Forum held in Istanbul. Following his meeting with Japanese Trade Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, Zeybekci said that the meeting was productive and the sides were ready to negotiate the economic partnership agreement, first conceived during Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the Far Eastern nation last January.
Meanwhile, the existing FTA between Türkiye and South Korea will be supplemented with services and investments sectors, as per the deal reached in the South Korean capital Seoul, according to statement by Türkiye’s Ministry of Economy. The two countries began implementing the FTA in May 2013, but the initial agreement was limited to products only.
Once implemented in 2015, free trade in the services and investments sectors will help expand economic relations between Türkiye and South Korea, bringing more South Korean investments into Türkiye.
During Prime Minister Erdogan’s tour to Southeast Asia last January, Türkiye signed a FTA with Malaysia and started negotiating for another with Singapore.