Turkey declares regional banking centre ambitions

This comes as a direct challenge to Bahrain, Beirut and Dubai which are also pursuing this role.

At the opening of The International Islamic Finance Forum in Istanbul today Finance Minister H.E. Mr Kemal Unakitan said, 'Our target is to make Istanbul the financial city of the future. We will be open to non-interest finance as well as all other types of financial institution.'

His statement to the premier event in Islamic finance followed a sweeping presentation of recent economic progress in Turkey. For 2003 Turkey has a 5% GDP growth target and 12% inflation target, he said. This compares with a 10% economic contraction and very high inflation in recent times.

The Minister strongly denied that the Turkish privatization process was going slowly, and called on Gulf companies to come forward to participate in privatization, particularly in the petrochemicals sector later this year.

He claimed that Turkey was now consigning its recent economic problems to history, and made his ambitions to place Istanbul at the centre of regional finance clear.

'Istanbul is a perfectly smooth environment for the flow of capital from Russia, the former Soviet countries, the Balkans and Middle East,' he claimed. 'Of course, we still have some bureaucratic problems but these are being tackled'.

The International Islamic Finance Forum is organized by Dubai based IIR Holdings and is now established as the premier event in Islamic Finance. The forum is organized in association with Dow Jones Indexes and Kuwait Turkish Finance House. The major sponsors are National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia and Noriba of Bahrain. The forum concludes on Wednesday.