Turkey Expects UAE To Initiate $51 Billion Investment Deal By Year-End

Turkey expects the first investments from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) into its economy to start flowing by the end of this year after the two countries signed a major investment deal last month.

“We have very productive dialogue with Gulf countries, with the most concrete example being the $51 billion financial investment package announced by the UAE,” Turkey’s Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek told the Yeni Safak newspaper in an interview published on Thursday.

In July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed the multi-billion investment deal while visiting the UAE, one of the world’s top crude oil producers and exporters, as part of a tour of several countries in the Gulf.  

UAE President, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Erdogan signed several landmark deals during the Turkish president’s visit.

In one of those, ADQ, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, announced two memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with Turkish entities to deepen bilateral cooperation and contribute to Turkey’s economic development. ADQ will finance up to $8.5 billion of earthquake relief financing bonds to accelerate reconstruction efforts from the devastating earthquake in Turkey in early February.  

The UAE and Turkey also agreed on $30 billion worth of energy deals, but these are provisional, may not materialize, and many will “take time,” the Turkish minister Simsek told Yeni Safak as carried by Bloomberg.

Turkey is trying to shore up its economy while betting on recent natural gas discoveries to turn it from a major importer of energy to an energy-independent country.

The volumes of natural gas that Turkey has found so far in the Black Sea are worth in excess of $500 billion, Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez told broadcaster CNN Türk earlier this year.

The huge gas finds would be enough to supply all households in the country for 35 years, or to cover total Turkish natural gas consumption, including from industry, for 15 to 20 years, the minister added.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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