Stênio Ribeiro
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - The Minister of Development, Industry, and Foreign Trade, Luiz Fernando Furlan, will travel to Turkey and England next week on another mission to increase Brazil's commercial exchanges with other countries. Last year these exchanges involved exports worth US$ 159.254 billion, producing a US$ 33.696 billion surplus in the trade balance.

This will be the Ministry's first official mission to Turkey, 25th in the ranking of world market buyers. In 2004 the overall trade volume between Brazil and Turkey amounted to only US$ 530 million. Brazilian exports totaled US$ 453 million, 34.5% more than in the previous year. Brazil's imports from Turkey rose in the same proportion, 31.7%, but on a smaller scale, from US$ 58 million in 2003 to US$ 76 million in 2004. Brazil enjoyed a trade surplus of US$ 376 million.

Turkey purchased industrial products, such as compressor pumps, transmitting and receiving devices, auto parts, perfumes, and calculators, and basic commodities, such as iron ore, leaf tobacco, soybeans, coffee, and chicken.

Furlan will be Ankara on March 18 for a meeting with the Turkish Minister of Foreign Trade and Customs, Kurshat Tüzmen, and the Minister of the Economy, Ali Babacan. He will also get together with the president of the Union of Turkish Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Shipping, and Commodity Exchanges, Rifat Hisarciklioglu. On the following day the Minister will go to Istambul for a work meeting with Ali Coskun, Minister of Industry and Commerce, and will meet with local entrepreneurs.

On his way to Turkey, Furlan will make a stopover in London, on March 16-17, to meet with British investors in the Brazilian Chamber of Commerce in the United Kingdom. He will also renew negotiations concerning bilateral cooperation on industrial policy with the British State Secretary for Commerce and Industry, Patricia Hewitt.

Translation: David Silberstein