Boosting Of Agriculture In Bosnia And Herzegovina By A Turkish Agency
Different nations have declared interest in Bosnia and Herzegovina for different reasons. For Turkey, it is the expansion of trade volume says Ahmet Esref Fakibaba of the Food, Agriculture and Livestock. The remark came during Fakibaba’s visit to Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo in October 2017.
“Increasing the trade volume between the two countries is among our most important goals, and I am confident that we will reach the target of $1 billion in a very short time. We aim to improve the mutual agricultural and trade volume and increase the opportunities for business associations.”
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) is trying to lure Bosnian farmers with new projects geared at improving their incomes as well as diversifying their produce. The project seeks to help the ailing eastern Bosnian economy which has never really bounced back since the Bosnian War of 1992 to 1995. Some of the programs lined up by TIKA include increasing the livestock population, encouraging family farms, empower women in the rural areas, create genotypes for goats and sheep, introduce organic walnut farms and vertical applications for farming, and promote greenhouse. TIKA is set to donate greenhouses with irrigation systems to 80 families in Srebrenitsa.
In addition to supporting greenhouse project in Bosnia and Herzegovina, TIKA is targeting to give 40 family farms 420 goats and 420 sheep as part of the genotype program. This will help them to take the project across the entire nation.
Bosnia and Herzegovina will also get a honey packaging plant with a yearly output capacity of 50 tons as part of the project. Two years ago, TIKA has initiated the project in other Balkan nations (including Albania and Moldova) with the aim of improving the standard of living of the rural people of European countries considered to be fairly poor.
Turkey uses Agricultural Business Forums to improve Turkey’s agricultural market share as well as help it to expand into and capture new markets. Sarajevo hosted the twelfth forum on 26 october 2017. In attendance were 180 Bosnian and 120 Turkish business people including the Mirko Sarovic, the Bosnia and Herzegovina Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Minister and Fakibaba.
Some of the long term impact of the partnership will be to increase the faith of Bosnians on economic security of the nation.
Sarovic reiterated some of the economic ties Bosnia has had with Turkey. He stressed that Turkey was the destination to most of Bosnia’s agricultural product in 2016. It can be recalled that in 2003, Bosnia and Herzegovina signed a bilateral agreement with Turkey. This increased the trade volume of both countries by almost 10 times.
Faik Yavuz, member of the Board of Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) noted that there are more than one hundred Turkish companies operating in different sectors of Bosnia’s economy particularly the agricultural sector.
The current trade volume between the two countries is over $600 million. State-run TIKA formerly seen as an instrument formed with the aim of helping former Soviet republics after the disintegration of the Soviet Union has now re-branded its operation in the past decade to become the major source of Turkey’s international influence by reaching out to people across the world.