Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, who met with influential actors of international financial markets in the US, had an important meeting with President Trump at the White House.
Following the meeting with Trump, Albayrak also had a comprehensive meeting attended by ministers and Trump's adviser and son-in-law Gerald Kuschner. Albayrak referred to his meeting with President Trump as positive and constructive adding he had conveyed President Erdogan’s messages to President Trump.
Minister Albayrak expressed that the meeting with President Trump had been the first meeting an American President had ever held with a Turkish Minister and could be interpreted as an indication of the importance attributed to Turkey by the USA.
Minister Albayrak met with reporters at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, prior to his speech at the 37th annual meeting of Turkey-US Business Council and the American Turkish Concilium (ATC) (within Foreign Economic Relations Board - DEIK) and shared following regarding his contacts:
"We have had meetings since Thursday and we had two programs on Monday. One of them was with our interlocutors in the Treasury and the Department of Commerce, at the White House. It was about increasing US$ 20 billion trade volume to US$ 75 billion. First we had a short initial meeting then the President of the United States accepted us. We conveyed President Erdogan’s messages to President Trump and a very positive, positive and constructive meeting took place. We received a very positive reaction from the President and we will forward necessary messages to our president Erdogan when we get back to Turkey”.
The Minister also added that there could be a meeting between President Erdogan and President Trump, in the near future.
Following his meetings at the White House, Albayrak who addressed the American-Turkish Council conference gala dinner before leaving the U.S. for Turkey made some important statements sharing some critical information.
He said, “Regardless of our differences on some matters, we have a great potential to strengthen our economic ties”. He also added that the relationship between both countries had never reached its true potential and noted that said economic ties should be the main stabilizer in bilateral relations.
He went on to say, “Let us avoid threats of sanctions and concentrate on creating a realistic and positive agenda”. He added that it was probably the best time to invest in Turkey as there would be no elections for the next four and a half years and Turkey would be offering amazing opportunities for investors of all stripes during this time.
The Minister referred to the recent reform packages in economy, introduced by the government and said “we have acted in cooperation with the Central Bank to achieve price stability in order to help the economy transition to a sustainable growth path and with the structural transformation steps to be in application for the rest of the year, we are now in a position to pursue a complementary mix of policy actions to improve the economic outlook in the near term as well as structural changes to increase our growth potential in the long term. Thus we hope and believe we will be able to increase predictability and overcome policy uncertainty for investments.
The Minister also provided information about the strong points of the banking system in Turkey to provide comfort in this regard and added that Turkey had a strong fiscal balance sheet that provided confidence on the way to reestablishing a growth in the second half of 2019. He also said Turkey would undertake an important transformation in tax code, later in current year.
