Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan are set to sign a regional banking cooperation agreement aimed at supporting and facilitating trade and investments between the countries.
The agreement comes in the wake of the signing of free-trade and visa-exemption agreements recently signed by the four countries, and comes amid a regional drive for further economic integration spearheaded by the Turkish government.
In comments made at the March 2011 "Enhancing Shamgen Banking: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan" conference in Istanbul, Turkey's Central Bank Governon, Durmus Yilmaz, remarked "Although this conference is a step toward improving relations between the banking sectors of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan in the short term, it is expected to contribute to the formation of a single market with the inclusion of other countries in the region in an area circumscribed by the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and the Mediterranean."
The Turkish daily, Today's Zaman has more on recent developments along that front:
The agreement comes in the wake of the signing of free-trade and visa-exemption agreements recently signed by the four countries, and comes amid a regional drive for further economic integration spearheaded by the Turkish government.
In comments made at the March 2011 "Enhancing Shamgen Banking: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan" conference in Istanbul, Turkey's Central Bank Governon, Durmus Yilmaz, remarked "Although this conference is a step toward improving relations between the banking sectors of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan in the short term, it is expected to contribute to the formation of a single market with the inclusion of other countries in the region in an area circumscribed by the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and the Mediterranean."
The Turkish daily, Today's Zaman has more on recent developments along that front:
Related Posts:Foreign ministers [from the four participating countries] decided on June 10 of last year to set up a high-level cooperation council to boost existing legal mechanisms ... to improve trade cooperation between them. The council plans to develop a long-term strategic partnership and to create a zone of free movement of goods and persons among them. ...
The countries’ aspirations to establish the planned single market in the Middle East are interpreted as the sign of the rise of an EU-like regional economic integration. Even the name of the conference proved how appropriate those interpretations are. The word “Shamgen” is a combination of “Sham,” the way the name of the Syrian capital of Damascus is pronounced in Turkish as well as in Arabic and with the meaningless “gen” to make it sound like the Schengen area, which comprises the territories of the 25 European states that act like a single state when it comes to international travel without internal border controls and visa requirements.
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Also speaking at the conference, Turkish Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) President Tevfik Bilgin said relations between the countries in terms of banking investments are insufficient at the moment. “Investments made by Syrian, Lebanese and Jordanian bankers in Turkey and investments by Turkish banks in these three countries are very small,” he said. ...
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