Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH’s) trade minister Mirko Sarovic and his Turkish counterpart Bekir Pakdemirli agreed on the continuation of meat export from BiH to Turkey on Friday here.
During the joint meeting, it was agreed that Turkey is one of the most important foreign trade partners of BiH and that the cooperation in the past years has consistently gone with “upward path”, BiH’s ministry of foreign trade and economic relations stated in a statement on Friday.
Sarovic pointed out on the need for parliaments of Turkey and BiH to ratify the new Free Trade Agreement as soon as possible.
He asked the Turkish side to allow the undisturbed export of meat from BiH to Turkey so that BiH’s businessmen would not suffer the consequences of waiting for the agreement to be ratified.
“At this moment, we have 4-5,000 tons of meat ready and it is very important that the export flows smoothly and that there is no delay,” Sarovic added.
During the meeting, the Turkish side announced that a new tender for import from BiH will be issued in the forthcoming period, and that an exception will be made in case of BiH, because, as Pakdemirli said, “BiH is a country that for a longer period of time does not import meat from other countries”.
On May 2 this year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chairman of BiH’s Presidency Milorad Dodik signed revised Free Trade Agreement in Ankara, aiming at encouraging cooperation and trade.
According to the data from BiH’s Foreign Trade Chamber, the total trade between two countries is 627 million euros (700 million U.S. dollars), of which BiH exported meat and products from meat to Turkey in the amount of 20.4 million euros (22.7 million U.S. dollars).
During the meeting, it was concluded that the joint goal is to reach one billion U.S. dollars annual trade as soon as possible.
In 2018, BiH exported 315 meat consignments to Turkey, which is over 4,000 tonnes more than in 2017.
