Turkey to attract $15 billion of FDI, says Albayrak

Turkey is expected to post an economic growth figure for the past year, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak forecast yesterday.

"We will end 2019 with a historic soft landing in terms of gross domestic product," Albayrak said at a meeting with journalists in Istanbul, adding that inflation will keep being a major indicator for 2020.

Turkey has developed a financial architecture which is designed to minimize the effects of external political risks, Albayrak said, adding that 2020 will be a year to fine-tune the economy.

He noted that between June 2018 and June 2019 Turkey was faced with attacks on its currency, but the Turkish Lira has stabilized over the past six months.

The minister noted that the risk premium indicator, namely the country's five-year CDS - credit default swap - has improved significantly as well as the yield on two-year government bonds.

Turkey's CDS declined as much as 337 basis points since August 2018, according to Albayrak.

"2019 was a difficult year but the Turkish economy managed to achieve a soft landing," he said, adding that last year the economy scored a positive growth.

"We are moving toward a balance growth path."

The official gross domestic product (GDP) data for the final quarter of last year have not yet been released.

In the third quarter of 2019, the Turkish economy expanded at 0.9 percent on an annual basis, after contracting 1.6 percent year-on-year and 2.3 percent year-on-year in the second and first quarters, respectively.

The government's growth target for 2019 is 0.5 percent. In the new economic program, unveiled in September last year, the government forecast that GDP growth will pick up to 5 percent this year.

Fighting inflation...