FTA With Turkey Signed

12. 06. 2009.

On June 1, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Regional Development Mladjan Dinkic and Turkish Minister for Foreign Trade Zafer Caglayan signed a free trade agreement between the two countries, which will be implemented as of January 1, 2010.

The agreement will be implemented in accordance with an asymmetric trade liberalization model which will be of advantage to Serbia. It will enable customs free export from Serbia to a 75 million Turkish market as of January 2010, while the reciprocity will be achieved in three phases until 2015. "During the talks with the Turkish side we focused on protecting our agriculture, textile and metallurgical sectors, while Serbia got the opportunity to immediately export all kinds of industrial products without paying customs duty", explained Dinkic.

Caglayan and Dinkic said that the implementation of the Free Trade Agreement will create conditions for a considerable increase of the overall volume of their trade, particularly the Serbian exports, as well as help to boost Turkish investment in the Serbian economy.