Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan addresses the Southeastern European Nations Cooperation Process ministers’ meeting in İstanbul. Çağlayan called for further economic partnerships between countries to realize the potential of the region. State Minister Zafer Çağlayan has announced that his ministry plans to double southeastern Europe’s share of Turkey’s total exports from 5 percent to 10 percent, while also calling for further economic partnerships between countries to realize the potential of the region.

The bank has revised downwards its estimate on the inflation rate this year, from 4.5 pc to 4 pc.
According to the latest BCR estimate, the Romanian economy will grow by 1.9 per cent in 2010, up from an earlier estimate of 0.6 per cent, and the GDP level reported before the recession onset will be reached in 2012 at the earliest, Lucian Anghel, the bank’s chief economist told Mediafax.

‘Although uncertainty level is high, the economy could return to growth in 2010 in the context of a more than moderate resumption of investments in the private sector, a resumption mainly backed by FDI,’ Anghel said in a press conference. At the same time, the population’s consumption could see low growth, mainly because of a good agricultural production and of a powerful base effect.

The privatization of energy distribution systems in Turkey is seeing radical changes, putting the focus on the satisfaction of millions of consumers of electricity and natural gas throughout Turkey while also lowering prices in the long run, Hasan Köktaş, president of the Energy Market Regulatory Agency (EPDK), has said.

In an interview with Today’s Zaman, Köktaş noted that the EPDK is still keeping watch over energy distribution companies even though many of them have been privatized. He stated that distribution firms are kept under close scrutiny so consumers do not become victims when the companies’ services go awry.