‘China Desk’ to help Chinese invest locally

ISTANBUL - Reuters

Hakan Binbaşgil. Company photo

Turkey’s Akbank and the Bank of China have established a “China Desk” to facilitate Chinese firms who have local partners and are planning to invest in the Turkish market.

The China Table will be geared toward providing services in foreign trade financing, Treasury products, yuan services and guarantee letters. There will also be two Chinese employees at the table.

“Our foreign trade volume with China has increased 20-fold in the past 10 years and reached $24 billion by the end of 2011. There are close to 450 Chinese or Chinese-Turkish firms in Turkey. There is a $100 billion foreign trade volume target between the two countries for 2020,” said Hakan Binbaşgil, Akbank’s general manager, speaking at a press conference on Sept. 25.

Akbank Assistant General Manager Hülya Kefeli added that Akbank wants to be the market leader in foreign trade services with China with a 10 to 15 percent market share.