Erdogan to Meet Investors in Ankara in Latest Effort to Reassure

EghtesadOnline: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will hold a rare meeting with the representatives of global companies operating in Turkey, the latest government effort to manage the political and economic fallout from last month’s failed coup attempt.

News ID: ۷۳۵۴۷۷

02 August 2016

The meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. Tuesday at the presidential palace in Ankara, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Twitter he would attend, and that his own planned event with investors in Istanbul was postponed, according to Bloomberg.

Economists including Atilla Yesilada at Globalsource Partners Inc. have said the crackdown on officials and companies accused of sympathizing with the coup plotters may be large enough to intensify an expected slowdown in economic growth this year, and S&P Global Ratings on Monday raised its risk assessment for Turkey to “high” from “moderately high.” The coup attempt will cost Turkey’s economy 300 billion liras ($100 billion), the Hurriyet newspaper cited Customs Minister Bulent Tufenkci as saying.

All members of the International Investors’ Association of Turkey, a foreign direct investment monitoring group, are invited, the group’s head Ahmet Erdem said by phone. Erdem, who is also head of Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Turkey unit, said another invite was sent by the TOBB, the Ankara-based Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey, to international companies that work with its members.

While financial markets have stabilized since the coup attempt, Turkey’s benchmark Borsa Istanbul 100 Index remains more than 7 percent lower since the July 15 coup attempt, and the lira is about 4 percent weaker against the dollar.