Finance & Business World

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who hosts the International Monetary Fund’s main annual meeting next week, wants to show that his $600 billion economy can survive the global crisis without new money from the lender.

Turkey has been the fund’s biggest borrower this decade, drawing about $43 billion to help recapitalize more than 20 failed banks. Erdogan, who heads an Islamist-rooted government that has been entrenching its power since a 2007 re-election, has resisted taking on new loans in more than a year of talks with the fund, even as the EU membership candidate sank into its deepest recession.

“Erdogan consistently said ‘no’ to the IMF, despite pressures from both the domestic and the overseas business community,” said Ahmet Akarli, an economist for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in London. He likely saw dependency on IMF loans as incompatible with his “strategy of transforming Turkey into a leading global player and a heavyweight in its immediate region,” Akarli said.

Istanbul, a city of 12 million that straddles the two continents, will welcome about 15,000 delegates including finance ministers of the G-7 countries. They’re here to attend the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank, the institutions set up after World War II to ensure financial stability and reduce poverty.

Turkish financial markets backed Erdogan’s go-it-alone strategy, posting gains even as Turkey refused IMF requests to reduce spending on local government and improve the country’s tax collection system.

Growing Power

Turkey’s benchmark ISE-100 stock index has added about 80 percent this year, exceeding the 57 percent gain on the benchmark MSCI Emerging Markets index. Yields on the country’s benchmark bonds have fallen by almost half, to a record low of 8.6 percent.

Erdogan, 55, is seeking to promote Turkey as a growing economic power and also a regional dealmaker. He’s mediated indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel, acted as a go- between in international talks with Iran over its nuclear program, and offered his country as a conduit to bring central Asian oil and gas to Europe.

The IMF and World Bank meetings are only held outside Washington once every three years and Turkey, venue for the 1955 summit, becomes the first country to host them twice — a publicity coup for Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party.

The IMF meetings “will take Turkey’s visibility to new levels,” Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan said on Sept 30.

No Walking Stick

Erdogan inherited an IMF program of spending cuts and state asset sales when he came to power in 2003, and stuck with it for five years. Now he’s balking at the fund’s demands for tighter budgets, and says Turkey no longer needs IMF cash.

“We’ve shown we can overcome crisis without the IMF,” he said on Sept. 17 in Istanbul, the city he ran as mayor between 1994 and 1998. “We’re trying to stand on our own two feet and move forward without a walking stick.”

Talks will resume once the annual meetings end, “and we’ll see what is needed,” fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss- Kahn said yesterday in Istanbul. “There’s no rush and no tension between Turkey and the IMF.”

The country’s banking system has weathered the global crisis without the need for government bailouts, after a decade of IMF-ordered changes to tighten regulation and risk management. Akbank TAS, the lender part-owned by Citigroup Inc., stayed profitable throughout the crisis and posted second-quarter net of $494 million, up 44 percent from a year earlier.

Limping Economy

Turkey’s manufacturing economy, though, is limping its way through the global slowdown, as European demand for Turkish-made cars, fridges and washing machines slumps. Net income at Ford Otomotiv Sanayi AS, the local unit of Ford Motor Co., fell 35 percent in the second quarter as exports slumped.

Gross domestic product dropped an annual 14.3 percent in the first quarter, the deepest contraction since quarterly records began in 1987. Unemployment among people under 24 jumped to 29 percent in February from 22 percent a year earlier.

The economy would have performed better if Erdogan had agreed IMF loans, Mustafa Koc, chairman of the country’s biggest industrial group Koc Holding AS, which is Ford’s local partner, said in Istanbul yesterday.

Ballooning Deficit

Higher spending to support the jobless, combined with lower tax revenue, is forcing the government to borrow more to fund a budget deficit forecast at 63 billion liras ($43 billion) this year, six times the target drawn up before the crisis struck.

That means Erdogan can’t cut off talks with the fund altogether. The country still owes about $8 billion to the IMF from earlier programs.

“They’ll keep the IMF talks in limbo for a while longer because that’s worked so far,” said Tevfik Aksoy, an economist at Morgan Stanley in London. “If global conditions worsen and it looks like there may be a need for money after all, then they’ll be able to announce it.”

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