Prime Minister Hüseyin Özgürgün has announced that the government has put into force the Structural Transformation Programme with the support of Turkey. This is the country’s most comprehensive reform programme to date.
The Prime Minister who was speaking at the general assembly of the TRNC Development Bank yesterday said that the aim of the reform programme was to strengthen the competitiveness of the TRNC economy.
Among those who attended and addressed the event was the Minister of Economy and Energy Sunat Atun, the Minister of Health Faiz Sucuoğlu and the Minister of Tourism and Environment Fikri Ataoğlu.
Speaking first, the Minister of Health Faiz Sucuoğlu stated that the TRNC Development Bank had given out loans in the field of health amounting to 7.5 million dollars.
He said that sector representatives needed to receive incentives so as to push this figure up.
Underlining the importance of health tourism, Sucuoğlu said that the amount of money spent on health tourism was seven times more than the money spent on culture tourism.
The Minister of Tourism and Environment Fikri Ataoğlu for his part highlighted the importance of the development bank for tourism, adding that the sector had grown considerably with the serious support of the bank. He also said that the government was in contact with the development bank to overcome the problems faced by small investors.
The Minister of Economy and Energy Sunat Atun who also spoke at the event pointed to the importance of keeping politics out of the affairs of the Development Bank.
Atun said that loans from now on would be given out in Turkish Liras in a bid to minimize the effects of fluctuations in foreign exchange rates.
Prime Minister Hüseyin Özgürgün, who was the last to address the opening of the general assembly, announced that a structural reform programme was currently in force.
He said that it was important that the Development Bank, which was an important source for economic investments in the country, maintained its liquidity and was currently restructuring itself to provide faster and more reliable banking.
Özgürgün added that the Development Bank played an important role Structural Transformation Programme which aimed to strengthen the competitiveness of the TRNC economy.
“We are giving a lot of importance to large sized enterprises just as we are giving importance of SMEs”, he added.
BRT