Turkey and Saudi Arabia agree to boost economic relations

Turkey and Saudi Arabia has agreed to boost economic relations and intensify the investments during the official visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh, which plans to invest 613 billion dollars, is expected to cooperate with Turkish companies in the next 5 years.

Saudi Arabia will also attempt to decrease dependency of its economy on fuel with the planned investments until 2020. Turkish companies will play a key role in this process.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which monetizes 90 percent of its total revenue from oil, are also expected to extend the bilateral trade volume which is degraded to 5.4 billion dollars at the end of 2014.

Currently, there are 468 companies in Turkey which are invested by Saudi Arabia, the country which invested more than 558 million dollars in the last 5 years.

The 613 billion dollars in investment projects includes the following items:

* $ 140 billion infrastructure
* $ 92 billion petrochemical
* $ 89 billion power and water
* $ 60 billion telecommunications
* $ 53 billion tourism
* $ 50 billion natural gas
* $ 28 billion agriculture
* $ 11 billion information technology
* $ 10 billion in education

The visit of Erdoğan is especially significant due to the potential of Saudi Arabia as an energy supplier to Turkey.

Source: Yeni Safak