ANKARA, March 30: The World Bank’s director for Turkey said on Friday the international lender was keen to help the manufacturing sector and would discuss in April how much lending it might provide.

The World Bank said earlier this week a team would come to Turkey in the first week of April to work on support for the manufacturing sector, financing exporters and corporate restructuring.

The amount is still under discussion but we would like to find ways to help to provide incentives for restructuring of the real economy, Ajay Chhibber of the World Bank told reporters before a panel on fiscal adjustment in Ankara.

We would like to help as much as possible because this will help recovery of the economy and this is the most important thing in the economy, Chhibber said.

Chhibber said the amount of financial support could be announced after a meeting between government officials and industrial representatives on April 5.

We would like to increase support in export finance but we will discuss this at the April 5 meeting.

Turkey is currently implementing a new $16 billion International Monetary Fund programme aimed at overcoming the worst recession since 1945 after a financial crisis swept through the economy in February 2001.

The economy is expected to have contracted by around 8.5 per cent in 2001 as a result of the crisis which cost thousands of jobs, halved the value of the lira and swelled the country’s domestic debt load.

The government now targets three percent gross national product growth in 2002 but economists say they have so far seen few signs that growth has actually kicked in.

Exports, which should benefit from the weakness of the lira, are seen as a crucial sector driving the recovery, though the lira has recovered some ground since late last year, taking the edge of Turkish industry’s competitive advantage.

Industrialists have called for tax breaks to help them recover from the crisis but the IMF programme calls for the government to run a tight budget, checking spending and raising revenues in order to service the swollen debt load.

The World Bank has so far committed itself to lend around $6 billion in total to Turkey, including a $1.35 billion tranche up for discussion at a board meeting in mid-April.

In return Turkey has committed itself to reforms in a number of areas including the energy sector, banking, corporate governance, and agriculture.

Chhibber said the government had made progress on a new law to improve transparency and good governance and he expected details to be announced in the coming week.

He also said he expected a “road map” on what Turkey will do about energy projects to be ready by the end of the year.—Reuters