| Danial Norjidi |
TURKEY is all set to launch a major food project in Brunei and discussions on the joint venture are in the final stages.
“The project which will be announced very soon will be in the Halal food sector,” said Fikret Oguz Ates, the Ambassador of Turkey to Brunei Darussalam, adding that an announcement in this regard is likely to be made before the end of the year.
Since the embassy was esta-blished in Brunei, and particularly within the last year, there has been growing interest from Turkish companies, the envoy said.
“They’ve already started coming and visiting. There will be an announcement soon of something already under way with the Brunei side, a joint venture, and this will be in line with Brunei’s efforts to diversify its economy, and there are a couple other projects along the line,” the ambassador told Weekend Bulletin yesterday at the embassy.
For the other projects, he said there are a few things still being negotiated. “It is already there, but concrete announcement may take a little bit longer, maybe in the middle of next year.”
One of the projects will be a joint venture upstream project.
Ambassador of Turkey to Brunei Darussalam, Fikret Oguz Ates. – DANIAL NORJIDI
There is great potential for economic cooperation between Brunei and Turkey, Fikret Oguz Ates said, noting that many opportunities exist, especially in tourism, due to Brunei’s strategic location as a hub in the Asean region.
“Between Turkey and Brunei, we believe there is great scope particularly in economic coope-ration between the governments but also at the private sector level.”
Turkey, he said, is the 18th biggest economy in the world, and 7th in Europe, and this was all achieved through an export-oriented economic growth market and by privatisation.
“So, for Turkey to discover new markets is extremely important, and we are giving high impor-tance to the Asean market.
“We don’t see Brunei as a small market,” the ambassador continued. “For us, Brunei’s aim to become a hub in the region overlaps with Turkey’s interest, because Turkey is a newcomer in this region.
“Now Brunei is trying to broaden its activities not only domestically, but because they want to diversify the economy, they want to open up to the world and to the region.
“In the region, it’s very strate-gically located and I agree with the view that it has a good chance to be a hub for communication and transportation of goods and services.
“So there are overlapping interests and this will create a lot of opportunities for the Turkish private sector to come and to get into joint ventures with Brunei companies, private or government companies, in the area of manufacturing and then exporting this from Brunei or via Brunei,” the envoy said.
He also touched on the topic of tourism, saying, “We know that Brunei is interested in developing its tourism sector, and Turkey is very experienced in tourism. We get around 40 million tourists a year.
“Turkey actually wants to also be active in the tourism sectors of other countries. So I think there are good opportunities to cooperate in developing the tourism sector and to also bring Turkish tourists over here to Brunei,” he said.
“The problem for tourism from Turkey to Brunei is that Brunei is not well known there, but once you have these companies operating here they will of course draw tourists.”
He added that there are also opportunities for Brunei to invest in Turkey. “This can be in private business, companies or individuals,” he said.
“There is already some interest in terms of investing in the real estate sector in Turkey. The real estate sector, particularly in Istanbul, is booming.”
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