Türkiye looking at $5 billion trade volume with Georgia

TBILISI/ISTANBUL

Türkiye's Trade Minister Ömer Bolat has announced that Türkiye and Georgia aim to boost their bilateral trade volume to $5 billion, noting that the current trade volume has already surpassed $3.5 billion.

Bolat, along with Georgian Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Mariam Kvrivishvili, opened the Türkiye-Georgia Business Forum in Tbilisi on July 16 in cooperation with the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK) and the Georgian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Bolat said economic relations between the two countries are progressing perfectly. “As a result of the Free Trade Agreement put into effect by the two countries in 2008, our mutual trade has exceeded $3.5 billion annually,” he said.

Noting that Turkish businesspeople are active in Georgia, Bolat said, “Our contractors have undertaken 304 projects worth $5.6 billion in Georgia so far.”

Stating that cooperation provided in the fields of railway data exchange and facilitation of border crossings with the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) Railway Data Exchange Agreement signed in 2022 directly affects the performance of the Middle Corridor, Bolat said, “Türkiye-Georgia coordination is of great importance for the sustainability of the Middle Corridor.”

As part of his engagements in Georgia, Bolat met with President Mikheil Kavelashvili and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.

Bolat and Kavelashvili discussed the steps to be taken further to advance commercial and economic cooperation between the two countries.

"We comprehensively evaluated the steps taken in customs and logistics cooperation,” Bolat wrote on X after his meeting with Kobakhidze.