Visa barriers 'hurting Turkish trade'

Turkish entrepreneurs are facing significant barriers when investing or tradingabroad due to visa requirements, the head of the country’s Union of Chambers andCommodity Exchanges told an Italian-Turkish economic conference in Istanbul onWednesday.Rifat Hisarciklioglu told the ‘Invest in Italy’ gathering that although trade betweenItaly and Turkey reached around US$20 billion in 2013, nearly 2,000 Italian firmswere established in Turkey compared to just 50 Turkish firms in the Europeancountry.He also claimed that although Turkey received more demand for shipments in 2013,only 40.000 shipments could be made to Italy due to transport restrictions.Chairperson of the Turkish-Italian Business Council, Zeynep Bodur Okyay, statedresearch and development capacity of Italian companies was high, something whichcould be applied to Turkish companies to increase the country’s exports to Italywhich decreased last year to 4 percent, from  7 percent in 2007."At the same time, Italian exports to Turkey has decreased to 5.1 percent from 5.7percent during the same period," she added.Italy’s ambassador to Turkey Gianpaolo Scarante stated "Italian entrepreneurs havestarted to trust Turkey in last 10-12 years."Stressing that Turkish companies should also start investing more in Italy, Scarantesaid “incredible” innovation and creation facilities existed there.