By E. Gurkan Abay
COPENHAGEN
The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development will have invested more than a billion euros in Turkey in 2014, making it its biggest market of operations this year, the head of the investment bank announced Tuesday.
In an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, the president of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Suma Chakrabarti said the institution was very satisfied with the outcomes of the various projects the bank had supported in Turkey.
“I am really proud of what we have done in Turkey because we only started our operations in [the country] four and a half years ago, from zero,” Chakrabarti said. "Turkey is to be our biggest country of operations this year, with a billion plus euros of investment.”
Chakrabarti pointed out that an important reason for this was because the development bank had recently ceased financing projects in Russia.
Owned by 64 countries, the European Union and the European Investment Bank, the multilateral development bank is one of the largest financial investors in the world.
“We now just opened a third office in Turkey [in Gaziantep] after the ones in Istanbul and Ankara,” Chakrabarti said. “We want to help the projects developed for eastern Turkey.”
Since initiating operations in Turkey in 2009, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development signed a total of 55 projects with a cumulative investment value of close to $2 billion (€1.6 billion). The total project value of these investments was over $6 billion, the development bank says on its website.
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