African countries drawn to 16th Eurasian summit

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The President of the Marmara Strategic and Social Research Foundation Akkan Suver (2nd R) and Istanbul Textile and Apparel Exporter Associations (ITKIB) management board member Volkan Atik (2nd L). Company photo

The annual Eurasia Economic Summit expects to host four country’s presidents and 420 foreign participants in Istanbul this April, with a substantial increase in participation from Africa, according to Akkan Suver, the president of the Marmara Strategic and Social Research Foundation, which has been organizing the event for 16 years.
 
There is a surprising increase in the number of participants from African countries in the annual economy summit this year, which is marking its 16th edition, Suver told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.

Madagascar Prime Minister Omer Berizy and ministers from Tanzania, Mali, South Sudan, Somalia, Morocco and Ethiopia will be attending the summit that will take place between April 9 and 11. “Peru is an unexpected participating country this year, they wanted to attend the summit despite its name ‘Eurasia,’” said Suver, adding that he took the designation “Eurasia” as a concept rather than a specific geographical area.

Exporters called

Four presidents from Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia and four Parliament heads from foreign countries, totaling 420 foreign participants from around 50 countries, are expected to attend the summit, Suver told a press conference yesterday in Istanbul. This year Ahıska Turks will be represented at the summit for the first time and they are expected to hold negotiations with Turkish firms, according to Suver. Meanwhile, Istanbul Textile and Apparel Exporter Associations (ITKIB) management board member Volkan Atik said that the increase in the participation of peripheral countries in this year’s summit was significant. “Our exports to Europe decreased around five percent due to the economic crisis, but we have experienced the opposite trend in alternative markets,” said Atik.

“The exportation rate with Iraq increased 52 percent this year, 36 percent with Saudi Arabia, 50 percent with Ukraine, 70 percent with Estonia, and 30 percent with Tunisia,” Atik told the Daily News yesterday.

Atik called on Turkish firms to pay attention to the countries speaking Russian, Arabic and Turkish while also increasingly producing higher value added products in order to avoid suffering adverse effects from the recent European crisis.