REUTERS
Ukraine and Turkey intend to sign an agreement on a free trade area and to bring bilateral trade turnover to $20 billion by 2020, said President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a joint press conference with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday.
"We pay special attention to the need to sign a Free Trade Agreement before the end of this year,” said Erdogan. “We also discussed with President Poroshenko how to increase trade turnover to $20 billion by 2020."
Erdogan also stressed that, in addition to the Free Trade Agreement, Ukraine and Turkey should sign and implement a number of other bilateral agreements, including the deal on avoidance of double taxation and protection of investment.
Read alsoUkraine Cabinet intends to sign FTA deal with TurkeyAs UNIAN reported earlier, the issue of setting up a free trade area between Ukraine and Turkey has been frozen in 2013 and relaunched in early 2016, during the Ukraine visit of the Turkish prime minister.
Read alsoTurkish PM pledges more investment in Ukraine, boost to bilateral tradeExport of goods from Ukraine to Turkey in January-September 2015 amounted to $2.1 billion, while imports from Turkey to Ukraine in the same period amounted to $0.6 billion. During the talks between the heads of governments of Ukraine and Turkey in February 2016, the parties set the goal to increase bilateral trade turnover to $10 billion by 2018.