HGK vice-president for industries and sustainable development Tomislav Radoš said that there was a lot of room for cooperation, trade in goods and services and joint participation in third markets.
"For the HGK Turkey is a strategic market and in the coming period we plan a number of activities in order to advance our cooperation. We also plan to open an HGK office (in Turkey) so as to facilitate business for the two countries' business people and encourage them to cooperate," Radoš said.
The forum at the HGK brought together around 40 Croatian and as many Turkish companies. Turkish companies are interested in cooperation in construction, engineering, construction materials, furniture, transport and shipbuilding.
Trade with Turkey in the first ten months of 2022 totalled €820.7 million, with exports having increased by 29% from the same period of 2021 to €286 million, while imports grew 48% to 534.7 million.
Croatia exports scrap iron to Turkey, and it accounts for around 50% of the exports, as well as certain products related to oil and oil products and the chemical industry, said Radoš.
One of the more important Turkish investments in Croatia was realised at the end of 2022, when the Turkish group Yildirim entered the ownership structure of Kutina's Petrokemija company, which produces artificial fertilisers.
Two Turkish companies have won a job to reconstruct the building housing the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the Sestre Milosrdnice Hospital in Zagreb.
A deputy project head at Akfen Construction Company, Mustafa Caner Ulukaya, said that the company was renovating six facilities that are part of the Zagreb hospital complex, damaged in the 2020 earthquake, and that the completion deadline was 23 months. He added that after the project was completed, the company would explore possibilities of investing in the tourism infrastructure.
Currently the most important construction activity in Croatia concerns the railway infrastructure, and Croatia expects major investments in that sector until the end of the decade.
The Turkish company Cengiz Insaat Sanayi ve Ticaret in early 2020 signed with the HŽ Infrastruktura company a contract for the reconstruction of the existing track and the construction of a second track along the railway section Križevci-Koprivnica-state border with Hungary. The project is worth €320 million, not including VAT, and 85% of the project value is financed with EU funds.
Turkish Ambassador to Croatia Yavuz Selim Kiran said he believed today's event would contribute to the two countries' economic relations which have been increasingly developing.