650 million liras allocated to new Turkish presidency ‘service buildings’

Neşe Karanfil - ANKARA

Some 650 million Turkish Liras ($227.5 million) have been allocated for “additional service buildings” of the Turkish Presidential Office over the next three years.

Between 2016 and 2019, 650 million liras will be allocated to construct the presidential office buildings, according to the Turkish government’s 2016 investment plan. Some 120 million liras of this amount will be spent over the coming year, according to a March 31 posting in the Official Gazette. 

An overall investment total of 798.8 million liras has been earmarked for the presidential office until 2019, with 673 million liras to be spent on new projects, 123.8 million liras to be spent on ongoing projects’ construction and maintenance work, and 2 million liras on project survey works. 

According to the plan, the state is funding overall investments worth a total of 64.9 billion liras, with 19.2 billion liras of this to be spent on new investments and 44.5 billion liras to be spent on on ongoing projects. Around 1.2 billion liras have been allocated for project survey works. 

Transportation projects will take up the lion’s share of investments, with around 19.8 billion liras to be spent on such projects over three years. This is followed by economic and social projects, worth around 11.9 billion liras; educational projects, worth 11.7 billion liras; agricultural projects, worth 7.9 billion liras; health projects, worth 5.3 billion liras; energy projects, worth 4.9 billion liras; and mining projects, worth 1.5 billion liras.

Some 3 million liras of funds have also been allocated for research works of the controversial Kanal Istanbul “mega project,” which aims to effectively build a second Bosphorus.