Auto sector attracts foreign investments

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

This photo shows an Opel Combo, is now being produced in a Bursa plant. AA photo

Three car giants announced they are investing 287.1 million euros in car production in two different factories in Turkey.

Toyota’s Turkey branch said it will make an additional investment of 150 million euros to its existing production plant in the Black Sea province of Sakarya and will employ 400 more people to start the production of saloon cars, according to a report by Reuters news agency yesterday.

The production of the new model in Turkey will be finalized within two years, the company said in a statement yesterday.

“With the production of the Verso model as well as the new project, the total production quantity in Turkey and our settlement here will increase,” the company said.

Meanwhile, Tofaş, the domestic carmaker operating under the Italian Fiat brand, has started producing the new Combo model at its plant in the Marmara Sea province of Bursa, after Fiat and Germany’s Opel cooperated to invest 137.1 million euros for the new model.

Combo production is expected to lead to foreseeable profits in the auto parts supplier sector in five years, according to a Hürriyet report yesterday. “The business volume will reach 1.4 billion euros and will be an important contributor to the economy in the middle to long term,” said Opel Turkey’s General Manager Özcan Keklik.

Higher taxes may harm van sales

A five percentage-point tax increase on Turkish van sales is expected to hurt domestic demand and output “more” next year, Kudret Önen, chairman of the Automotive Association, said yesterday, according to a Bloomberg news agency report.

Turkey’s van production expanded 15 percent to 450,000 units in the first 10 months, from a year earlier, mainly due to a strengthening domestic demand while exports grew about 12 percent, Önen said in an emailed statement yesterday. The government raised special consumption taxes on non-electric passenger cars with larger engines and vans on Oct. 13 to narrow Turkey’s record current account deficit and slow a booming economy. The tax rate on vans rose to 15 percent from 10 percent