ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey will launch a $5 billion package to boost annual production of electric vehicles to one million units, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, adding that Ankara will also present other stimulus packages for high-tech areas worth $30 billion.
Speaking in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkey had paved the way for EV makers to invest in Turkey, namely through China’s largest EV maker BYD agreeing to build a $1 billion production facility in the country. He also said Ankara wanted to be a major player in the field in the long term.
“We are implementing a $5 billion stimulus package in this area to increase our annual production capacity to at least one million units,” Erdogan said.
He said the government plans to invest another $5 billion in the construction of a semiconductor chip factory.
“With our battery call, we aim to become a regional manufacturing base by building 80 gigawatt hours of capacity by 2030,” he said, adding that a $4.5 billion stimulus package would also be introduced for this purpose.
Erdogan also said that Turkey would provide $2.5 billion in subsidies for solar cell installations with a capacity of up to 15 GW and that the government had allocated another $1.7 billion for the production of crucial components for wind energy.
Erdogan said that with all these incentives, Turkey aims to attract at least $20 billion in private sector investment, adding that Ankara would announce more details soon.
(Reporting by Can Sezer and Tuvan Gumrukcu. Editing by Jane Merriman)