Erdoğan to meet US business leaders to draw investment to Turkey

The president of Turkey, Tayyip Erdoğan is due to meet top US business leaders in New York this month, in an attempt to attract new investment.

A high-level delegation led by the president will engage with investors and corporate executives at four events scheduled alongside the UN General Assembly in the final week of September, the Financial Times reported, citing the Turkey-US Business Council and other informed sources.

Erdoğan is expected to meet 20 Fortune 100 US company executives, including executives from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, on September 23, the newspaper reported.

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Turkey’s finance minister, Mehmet Şimşek, and its central bank chief, Fatih Karahan, are also due to hold investor meetings to try to drum up investment interest.

The country’s exports jumped 13.8 percent in July to a total value of $22.5 billion, the state statistics agency, Turkstat, said last month. Imports fell 7.8 percent to $29.8 billion, giving a $7.3 billion deficit for the month.

The seven-month trade figures also showed a steady improvement, with the trade deficit down 8.3 percent to just under $50 billion. 

In August the central bank held interest rates steady at 50 percent for a fifth consecutive month, despite geopolitical developments keeping inflationary risks alive.

The global rating agency Fitch upgraded Turkey’s long-term foreign currency issuer default rating to “B+” from “B” in March, after the government imposed greater-than-expected monetary policy tightening to control inflation.