The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced that Russia remained the EBRD’s biggest country of operations with over €2.5 billion invested in 2012, and Turkey becomes the second-largest country of operations for the EBRD in terms of annual business volume.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) commenced operations in Turkey in 2009. Since then, it has seen the Bank’s investments grow to reach an annual total of €1.049 billion in 2012, in 28 projects. This means that Turkey is the second-largest country of operations for the EBRD in terms of annual business volume following Russia. Recently, the EBRD also reported of a record number of projects financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2012.

According to the EBRD, Turkey is also the fastest-growing EBRD market, reaching today’s levels of investment up from €150 million in 2009 – the first year of its operations in Turkey. The total EBRD portfolio in Turkey has exceeded €2.6 billion in 76 projects, the total value of which is €8.2 billion – which means that every euro from the EBRD was supplemented by 2.2 euros from other sources of investment.

96% of the EBRD investments in Turkey have been in the private sector with the remainder in municipal infrastructure projects without sovereign guarantee. As examples, there are the Kirikkale closed-cycle gas turbine (EBRD investment over €151 million), Istanbul Ferries privatisation project with IDO and TASS (€115 million), Eurasia tunnel under the Bosporus (€112 million), and two €100-million projects –one to finance construction of the Bares wind farm in Balikesir and the other to support expansion of Turk Telecom’s broadband network in eastern parts of Anatolia. The EBRD also stressed that substantial investments were also made through a number of energy-efficiency credit lines intermediated through Turkish banks to medium-sized enterprises.