Turkey hopes to initiate Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations with Malaysia by April this year after a very positive exploratory talks between the two countries recently, a news agency said.
“Hopefully by April, we will launch the FTA negotiations,” Director-General of European Union Affairs at the Undersecretariat of Prime Ministry for Foreign Trade of Turkey Husnu Dilemre told Bernama in an interview.
Dilemre had led a Turkish delegation to Malaysia for the exploratory talks on a possible FTA between the two countries which he said would enhance bilateral relations and trade.
“Both countries will commit a feasibility study. We will conduct ours and come back together to see what we have achieved and then the Malaysian side would take this to the Cabinet. We will wait for that,” he said.
Dilemre said that Turkey was also keen to have FTA talks with other Asean countries like Singapore and Indonesia, and India but had yet to initiate any kind of exploratory talks.
“We are going to start with Malaysia first and other Asean countries could take this as an example and be attracted to it,” he said, adding that Turkey is set to launch FTA talks with South Korea after a couple of initial talks.
Turkey is the gateway to Europe, Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Caucasia.