BCCI hosted a meeting with a Turkish delegation

At BCCI a discussion meeting was held with representatives of the Turkish-Bulgarian Economic Council at the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey (DEIK). Representatives of large Turkish companies from leading sectors of economy such as telecommunications, electronics, logistics, metallurgy, pharmacy, IT, chemical industry, textile industry, were included in the Turkish delegation.

The President of BCCI Tsvetan Simeonov gave a start to the meeting by outlining the two main goals – to restore the cooperation between the Bulgarian-Turkish and the Turkish-Bulgarian Economic Councils and to strengthen the relations between the two organizations. He said that he appreciated highly the development of DEIK in the last years and wished success to the Board in its attempt to give an impetus to the business relations between the two countries and to help increase trade turnover.

The newly-elected Chairman of the Turkish-Bulgarian Economic Council Osman Ak expressed hope that the mutual economic cooperation would give actual results. In this regards, M. Emrah Sazak, Chief Commercial Counselor at the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Sofia said that the Embassy’s main partner in Turkey was DEIK, and in Bulgaria – BCCI. According to him cooperation between DEIK and BCCI had a real chance of improving the bilateral relations.

Discussing the relations between Bulgaria and Turkey, Yılmaz Soycan, member of DEIK, expressed concern about the aggravated conditions of interaction and fear that if there wasn’t an improvement in the bilateral relations, it was possible that the Turkish businesses would focus their attention on Romania and its ports and commercial corridors. On the topic, Tsvetan Simeonov noted that in turbulent times it was precisely the businesspeople that set a positive example of cooperation, predictability and mutual assistance.

Before the official bilateral meeting, a regular session of the Bulgarian part of the Joint Business Council Bulgaria-Turkey was held, presided by Tsvetan Simeonov. The Rules and Regulations on the Activity of the Council were updated and Nikolin Gavrailov, Chairman of the Bulgarian Entrepreneurial Chamber in Building was elected Vice-President of the Council.