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My name is Jennifer Smith and I am a part-time MBA student who will be traveling to Dubai and Istanbul. My classmates Cheryl, Sabeen, and I did research on Foreign Direct Investment in Turkey. Our research demonstrated that Istanbul is an up and coming city. Turkey is moving quickly towards being an economic world power as a member of the G20. This is definitely a country that you want to monitor closely when identifying future investments and business ventures.
Turkey has made investment much more attractive to foreigners in recent years. If you look at Turkey’s location, especially Istanbul, you will see that it is in the center of Europe, Asia, the Middle East and close to Africa. It is a perfect spot for countries to build manufacturing facilities and run sales operations in order to gain access to different world markets.
The relationship between China and Turkey is one to watch. Trade volume between the two countries has increased 1554% between 1996 and 2006 and has continued to sky rocket. If this rate continues, China will more than double Turkey’s trade with the US and EU. This relationship could reshape the composition of the trade routes across the Asian Continent to the Mediterranean aka “The Silk Road.” China has four motives for investing in Turkey; market seeking, resource seeking, asset seeking, and efficiency seeking. These reasons are applicable to most foreign companies.
Major companies have been lured to Turkey. For example, Coca-Cola runs almost two-fifths of its operations out of Istanbul. GE consolidated its Healthcare international operations units to Istanbul as well. Most businesses in Turkey are within wholesale, retail trade, manufacturing, and real estate. Turkey has offered tax advantages and investment incentives to attract foreign investors. I think it is great that so many opportunities are available in Turkey!
