Turkey’s image in foreign press not positive, says Babacan

ISTANBUL - Doğan News Agency

AA Photo

Turkey’s image in foreign press has not been positive for the last 1.5-2 years, but the country’s turn with the G-20 presidency provides a good opportunity fix this, said Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan Feb. 11.

“The image of Turkey has not been positive in foreign press for the last 1.5-2 years… Mainly negative points are featured unfortunately. In this vein, our G-20 presidency is of great importance to fix this,” he said at the Think-20, a think-tank meeting led by the Economy Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) in the framework of Turkey’s G-20 presidency.

“All meetings in the framework of the G-20 presidency, the Think-20 meetings or the Business-20 meetings, matter a lot for us. We will all harvest the yields of our successes if we can make solid projects during our G-20 presidency. What is more, Turkey becomes quite successful if we can make a contribution to resolving the global economic and financial crisis,” he said.

He said countries want to standardize public-private partnerships (PPPs) with a number of international organizations, including the World Bank, and asked for the launch of an accreditation mechanism to examine whether such projects are applied with the proper standards.

“When we met representatives from the international organizations and shared our ideas on PPPs, they said they had been seeking such ideas. Long-term predictability is the key here,” he said.

“It takes around 15 years at least to finalize a PPP project in a country and to start to take a return.

This might extend to even 40 years, during which this country might see 10 different cabinets. Policies might change in those years… In this regard, a solid legal framework is a must to make such projects,” he said.

The two-day G-20 summit was held in Istanbul amid major doubts over sluggish global growth, more volatile currencies and deflationary pressures on some advanced economies.

G-20 finance officials painted a downbeat picture of the world economy on Feb. 10 and vowed to use monetary and fiscal policy to boost activity, if needed.

A communique released at the end of a two-day meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Istanbul, said: “We will continuously review our monetary and fiscal policy settings and act decisively, if needed.”

Babacan said many European ministers had wanted to use the Islamic financing methods in their own countries, adding that such methods might give good results, especially during crisis periods.