Many foreign investors started to show interest to the Turkish market at the last years. It is seen that foreign investors focus on 4 different sectors in Istanbul, which is one of the cities most affected by this interest. According to reports, Covid-19 pandemic due to the recession and then passed to the normalization process in Turkey, a total of 2.678 foreign investors between June and September invested approximately 650 million USD to Turkey. It turns out that foreign investors mostly invested in the service, retail, construction-building and machinery-automotive sector in this period. It is observed that Middle Eastern and European companies focus on the service sector, while African companies prefer to invest in the retail sector.
The number of companies and the amount of capital in which newly established foreign investors are shareholders in Istanbul have increased significantly in recent months. According to the report prepared by the Statistical Unit of the Economic and Social Research Directorate of the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, in the first 3 months of 2020 before the coronavirus epidemic, 2 thousand 779 foreign investors invested 506 million Turkish Liras in Istanbul, and during the March-June period with quarantine measures and flight bans. It is stated in the statistics that new foreign capital investment decreased with the slowing down economic activities and that only 573 foreign shareholders made 145 million Turkish Liras of investment.
Normalization Process in Turkey
With the normalization process, the new investment enthusiasm of foreigners caught the period before the pandemic and it was reflected in the figures that 2.678 foreign investors established new companies with a capital of 647 million TL. The sectors in which foreign investors invested the most in Istanbul during this period are listed as services, retail, construction-building and machinery-automotive. In this period, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Pakistan ranked first in terms of the number of investors, while Syria, Iran, Germany, Iraq and England were among the top five in terms of capital value.
Retail Sector is Preferred by Foreign Investors
It is understood that in the first 9 months of 2020, the retail and service sectors maintain their place as the sectors with the most investments. In the period before the Covid-19 lockdown, it was seen that these sectors were followed by the construction-building and textile sectors. However, with the pandemic, it is seen that foreign investors focus on the health and informatics sectors as the third and fourth sector. In the post-normalization period, it is among the results that focus on construction-building and machinery-automotive investments instead of health and informatics. During the normalization period, the Middle East and European Union member countries made the most investments in the service sector in Istanbul, while the preference of African countries in investment attracts attention as the retail sector. various Asian countries like Pakistan and India, are managing the Middle East and Africa region in Turkey.
Also in the report, the Swedish based company in Turkey last 5 years, they crated 47.3 billion USD worth of added value, Swedish companies as of 2018 has contributed more than employ 61.000 people in Turkey and the Swedish firm only on employees in the R & D department the number of commercial relations between the two countries more than a thousand room.Good contribution to addressing the economic and social life of his report to the Turkey; Swedish Embassy, Consulate General of Sweden, the Swedish Trade Council Business and Investment Sweden and formed the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Turkey “Team Sweden” was created by.
