Mexico to open Istanbul trade office to boost business volume

The Mexican government's trade and investment promotion agency has decided to open up an office in Istanbul to promote business activity between Turkey and Mexico. Enrique Haro, the chief of staff at ProMéxico (Mexican Trade and Investment Agency), told Today's Zaman on Tuesday that the board of directors of ProMéxico had last week approved to add Istanbul, Turkey's largest city and business capital, to the list of countries where it wants to have a representative office. Turkey and Mexico, both G-20 members with a $1.8 trillion combined value of gross domestic product (GDP), maintain a very low trade volume. For the last year, the trade volume was $845 million according to Turkish government statistics, up from $640 million a year earlier. Both government officials have expressed in the past their determination to boost this figure. "We consider Turkey a very important country. We want to maximize our trade," Haro said, adding that an office in Istanbul is a new approach for ProMéxico. The agency currently has 33 offices worldwide and has decided to open three more this year, one in Istanbul, one in Detroit and another in Hong Kong. ProMéxico will experiment with a new concept with the Istanbul office, as the office will be jointly run by two other Latin American countries, Colombia and Peru. "We will review it later to see how it is functioning," Haro said. Haro explained that the first objective of the office in Turkey is to have a better understanding of markets on either side. He attributed this unexpected decision by his agency to turn its attention to Turkey to a burgeoning interest from Turkish companies in Mexico's rapidly developing aerospace industry. Haro said eight companies had registered in one expo show run by the Mexican aerospace industry. "We did not realize that there was such a strong interest from Turkey. So we thought this could be a good opportunity in the short term," he stated. In the medium and long term, he wants to attract other businesses in different industries from Turkey. Haro also invited Turkish businesses to invest in his country, saying that Mexico is the country with the largest number of free trade agreements (FTAs) in the world. "Mexico's network of agreements covers 44 countries on three continents. This is a unique opportunity for international commerce and investment because it gives strategic access to a potential market of over 1 billion consumers, which represents more than 60 percent of the world's GDP," he explained.