The Government of Turkey hosted the 6th Invetment Advisory Council (IAC) Meeting on June 10th in Istanbul to which many CEOs from top Multi-National Companies attended in addition to participants from Multinational institutions including the World Bank, the IMF and EIB.
Under the chair of the Prime Minister Mr. Tayyip Erdogan, top level executives of 18 multinational companies, World Bank’s ECA VP Philippe Le Houerou, IMF’s MD Dominique Strauss Kahn, the President of EIB Philippe Maystad, and the chairmen of four leading business associations (TUSIAD, TOBB, YASED, TIM) along with a couple of cabinet members and related senior government officials discussed Turkey’s progress in the previous year at the sixth meeting of Invetment Advisory Meeting on June 10th 2010.
IAC aims to bring together the expertise and experience of top business leaders of major international companies to Turkey also providing perspectives on the Government’s measures to improve Turkey’s investment climate and presents views on how to enhance its competitive position in the world economy. This year the agenda for the IAC meeting was structured into three sessions. In the opening session, the Deputy Prime Minister made welcoming remarks, and then solicited comments from the World Bank and the IMF.
In his opening remarks Philippe Le Houerou, VP of the World Bank congratulated the Government for Turkey’s remarkable progress on all fronts since 2001 and mentioned that the basic ingredients for Turkey to achieve even better in inclusive growth and high investment flows have already been identified as having: a supportive macroeconomic setting, good infrastructure and energy, and an enabling investment climate. His remarks focused on the third of these ingredients – an enabling investment climate – and within this, in particular, effective regulation; the creation of jobs; and private R&D and innovation.
In the next session, each IAC member were asked to make comments related to how they viewed the changes in Turkey’s investment environment in the past year, particularly as compared to developments in other investment destinations globally. The CEOs representing Adobe, Alshaya, Cisco, Citi, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, Fiat, Finmeccanica, Hoawei, Indesit, Jain, Kraft Foods, Li&Fung, Mitsui, Ogilvy, Teleperformance, UPS, Vodafone also had the chance to suggest to the government of Turkey what needs to be done in the coming year to improve investment flows to Turkey and mentioned the issues related to their sectors. At the final session, a Declaration of Outcomes was written which summarized the outcomes of the discussions.
The Investment Advisory Council (IAC) for Turkey was established in March 2004. The World Bank has provided technical assistance to help establish this public-private dialogue based on global best practices. The inaugural meeting was attended by President Wolfensohn; MD Zhang represented the WBG at the second meeting in 2005; ECA VP Shigeo Katsu attended the third and fourth meetings in 2006 and 2007. MD Graeme Wheeler attended the fifth meeting in 2008. The government did not hold a meeting in 2009, due to the timing in relation to both the financial crisis and hosting of the IMF/WB Annual Meetings.
