The Capital Markets Board (SPK) and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) will also move their administrative centers to İstanbul from Ankara, Erdoğan said while delivering a speech at a meeting to mark the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the İMKB in İstanbul.
What the government hopes to accomplish by moving the İstanbul bourse to this new location and positioning it next to public banks, he said, is to provide extra speed to trade on the stock market “while delivering a very different message to the world.”
“This is an important issue and we will discuss and conduct deep deliberations over it. We will take the necessary steps [to move the İMKB],” Erdoğan said.
On the relocation of the headquarters of public banks, the prime minister said the process is continuing apace, and added that all preliminary and preparatory steps to this end must be completed by the end of 2011 and without further postponement. Moving all the mentioned financial institutions to their new locations in İstanbul will take two to three years, the prime minister estimated, adding that the government is decisively conducting policies to this end within the strategy of promoting İstanbul as a financial hub.
“Making İstanbul a financial hub has been a big desire of mine during my eight years at the Prime Ministry, but we have failed to break ground despite having completed all projections about it,” he admitted, adding that concrete steps will soon be taken.
Erdoğan noted that İstanbul's stock market will gain a more universal identity by the time İstanbul emerges as a financial powerhouse in its region.
The Turkish financial markets enjoyed a growth rate of 8.5 percent in 2009, Erdoğan said, underscoring that this achievement came at a time of when the effects of a harsh global economic crisis were still affecting the world. Turkey, during this process, has been the only country among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to avoid an intervention in the running of the financial sector, he noted.
“Many came to us asking for an intervention, but each time we rejected their requests, saying, ‘We will never intervene and the financial sector as it will stand on its own two feet.' Did it have trouble in the meantime? Yes it did, but we have overcome them all,” Erdoğan said.
In 2002, when the Justice and the Development Party (AK Party) was voted into office, the İMKB-100 benchmark index was at around 11,000 points and recently saw levels of over 70,000 points, Erdoğan said to exemplify the success attained during this time. Furthermore, the total value of stocks traded on the bourse was only $34 billion in 2002, a figure that has risen to $323 billion today, the prime minister said, adding that daily trade volume also soared from $281 million to $1.7 billion over the last eight years.
Source : http://todayszaman.com/news-229217-pm-erdogan-says-imkb-may-be-moved-to-new-finance-center.html - Dec 10, 2010 |
