High privatization tenders may cost citizens dear: OECD

LEIPZIG - Hürriyet Daily News

The secretary-general of the OECD (P) warns Turkey about high prices in big projects, while praising its economic success. REUTERS photo

The high prices paid in infrastructure projects might result in expensive tariffs for the customers and the Turkish government should be careful about such a situation, the secretary-general of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said.

Turkey has recently been able to sell off large infrastructure projects with multi-billion deals, as in the case of the third airport tender in which the winner has offered to pay 22.1 billion euros to the state for the 25-year rent.

Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD told the Hürriyet Daily News May 23 that governments should be cautious about unrealistically high prices since the private sector might try to get high tender and investments cost out of citizens who are benefiting from the service.

“I wouldn’t give it to the one that offers more money, I would give it to the one that offers lower tariffs,” Gurria said in the German city of Leipzig on the sidelines of a a three-day annual summit of the International Transport Forum. He also warned that if a state did not consider this, despite the money it ranked at the first place, the facility may become inefficient in the end causing more troubles.

‘Turkey may not want EU’

He adds that Turkey had already been a part of the EU in practice with the Customs Union.“I always say this, you may not want Turkey to join Europe,” he said.

Turkey may grow by around 5 percent through this year despite the spillover effects of a global slowdown on the economy, OECD secretary-general also said.

“As a country which is part of an international value chain, inevitably Turkey has been affected by the slowdown trend but the important thing is to grow sustainably, […] How could it avoid the impact of a worldwide recession as a medium-size, open economy in the middle of Europe?” Gurria explained, but added the country still “did a pretty good job” in overcoming the difficulties entailed by the crisis which caused recession in all of its major trading partners.

In his remarks, he said he expected the Turkish growth rate to be realized at around 5 percent, which is above last year’s 2.2 percent.“But the high growth is not even desirable, as long as the growth is sustainable” he adds.