Turkey, Italy in transportation crisis

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s transportation representatives said Turkey’s exports to Italy have almost halted for the last 15 days due to a transportation bottleneck between the two countries.

Italy has not increased the number of clearance certificate documents for Turkish transporters since 2008, although the trade volume between the two countries increased by around 45 percent, according to sources. Due to the lack of the required number of documents, the Turkish side hasn’t been able to increase transport to the country, the sources added.

The existing clearance documents’ expiry date ended on Feb. 15. The Turkish authorities asked for 14,000 additional documents from their Italian counterparts at a meeting on Feb. 12, but Italy offered to give only 1,000 additional documents.

“After the meetings became deadlocked, the Turkish representatives from the International Transporters’ Association (UND) left,” said the head of the association, Fatih Şener.

“In our previous meeting in 2008, Italy secured 2,000 additional documents for us. We had not met with them again for seven years, until this month. If both sides had met annually for the last seven years, we would have taken 14,000 additional documents,” Şener said, adding the current problems have negative effects on both the Turkish and Italian economies, which have high levels of trade with each other.