Turkey donates $1.3 billion to poor countries

DOHA - Anatolia News Agency

Turkey donated $1.3 billion in 2011 to poor nations as support to the least developed countries holds an important place in its international development initiatives, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on April 21.

“We will continue with determination to support the least developed countries and voice their problems on every occasion and platform,” Erdoğan said during the 13th United Nations (UN) Conference on Trade and Development in Doha, Qatar.

Erdoğan said Turkey had hosted the Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries last May, and had vowed to follow the implementations in line with the Istanbul Action Plan and Declaration for the next decade.

“As the government, we have committed to extend every type of support to our investors in order to increase their direct investments in these countries to $10 billion by 2020,” he said.

Most importantly, Turkey has put into practice an economic and technical cooperation package envisaging the allocation of $200 million of resources to the least developed countries, he added.

Turkey made official development assistance worth $1 billion in 2010. “With these figures, Turkey has become the OECD member that has most increased its official development assistance,” the premier said, adding that this was concrete evidence of Turkey’s support to developing countries.