Turkey ‘becomes third largest country exposure for World Bank’s lending arm’
ISTANBUL
Turkey was in 2015 the third largest partner of the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) unit, which made investments worth around $4.3 billion in the country, said IFC Turkey Manager Aisha Williams in a meeting hosted by the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK) on Jan. 21. “Turkey remains a priority country for IFC and for the World Bank Group. The IFC made investments worth around $18 billion last year globally. With a portfolio of around $4.3 billion as of 2015, Turkey became the third largest country exposure for IFC globally. The IFC has made record-high investments worth over $1.8 billion on energy sector in Turkey, where the unit has mainly focused on energy and infrastructure development, improve municipal services, develop public-private partnerships [PPPs], promote local capital markets, and help Turkish companies increase competitiveness and impact,” said Williams.
She noted that Turkish companies have accelerated their outward direct investments heavily for the last couple of years, increasing the volume of such transactions from around $1.3 billion to $6 billion.
She added that the IFC has recently offered financing to outward investments of TAV, Şişecam and Anadolu Group for the last three years.
The meeting with Williams in Istanbul was organized in cooperation with Allen&Overy and IFC, the World Bank’s private sector lender.
Turkish companies’ foreign assets have exceeded $50 billion with the acceleration in such transactions, said DEİK Foreign Investments Business Council President Ender Arslan.
“Turkish companies recently acquired a number of leading foreign companies, such as Belgium’s Godiva, Britain’s United Biscuits, Mexx from the Neterlands, Germany’s Grundig, Russia’s Trader Media East, Iran’s Razi Petrochemicals, Sout Africa’s DEFY and Italy’s FinCuoghi. They have also made various greenfield investments across the world. Their foreign assets now exceed $50 billion,” Arslan added.
