The Eldorado of Italian companies 2012-09-18

Turkey: The Eldorado of Italian companies

Turkey's GDP increase may have slowed from last year's galloping 8.5% to the new quarter's 2.9%, but it still remains the Eldorado of Italian businesses, who keep flocking to invest in the country of the crescent moon. Just 220 in 2002, they now total 936, and are eager to be players in what is Italy's fourth trading partner, just a two-hour plane ride away.

The world's 17th economy, Turkey aims to make it into the top ten by 2030, its economy drawn by both the great Istanbul-based "European-style" entrepreneurial world, which makes up 40% of GDP, and the so-called Anatolian Tigers, a host of new, small and medium businesses that are inspired by their northern Italian colleagues.

One of the world's emerging powers along with China, India, and Brazil, Turkey is making investing hundred of billions in ambitious, long-term development plans, and Italian companies are on site to carve out a piece of the action. In joint ventures with Turkish companies, they are bidding to build bridges, tunnels, railways, nuclear plants.

The bid to build Istanbul's third airport is going out at the end of the year, and Italian construction company Astaldi has won the contract to build thousands of miles of highway, and the third bridge over the Bosphorus Strait.

Italian companies, which the crisis has turned out of their home country to look for new pastures abroad, do well to consider Turkey, according to Nicola Longo Dente from Italian bank Unicredit, which has significant local market share.

A great new market is about to open up, with the launching of the government's new, multi-billion dollar, 10-year anti-seismic plan involving the destruction, restoration and construction over a third of the country's housing stock, said Italian Ambassador Gianpaolo Scarante, who presided over a meeting on Thursday with Italian entrepreneurs working in Turkey. "This could be a gold mine for Italy, which is the superpower of restoration", Scarante said.