SWEDISH COMPANIES have contributed a total of TRY 47.3 billion in gross value added to the Turkish economy over the last five years, according to data compiled by Team Sweden, made up of representatives from the Embassy of Sweden, the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul, and the Swedish Trade & Investment Council in Turkey. Several Turkish subsidiaries of Swedish companies manage their CIS, Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and India regions from Turkey, the data showed. They employ over 28,000 people directly and a total of 61,900 indirectly, of which 28.8 percent are female.
Turkey is home to 125 Swedish companies and more than 400 have distributor/ agents in the country, including Ericsson, Autoliv, Securitas, H&M, Sandvik, Lindex and IKEA.
Mutual political and trade relations go back to 17th and 18th centuries when the King of Sweden, Karl XII, took refuge in the Ottoman Empire after his defeat in Poltova in 1709, ruling his kingdom for five years in exile from Ottoman territory. The trade volume between Turkey and Sweden was approximately $3.1 billion in 2018, of which $1.4 billion were exports from Turkey to Sweden and $1.7 bilion exports from Sweden to Turkey, according to Statistics Sweden.
The gross value added contribution of Swedish companies to the Turkish economy increased, with an annual growth of 7 percent in constant 2018 prices between 2014 and 2018 and is expected to increase 13.5 percent year on year in 2019. The top 50 Swedish companies were expected to contribute TRY 12.6 billion to the Turkish economy at the end of 2019.
The top five Swedish companies have exported a total of $4.2 bilion from Turkey between 2014 and 2018. Autoliv is ranked as the 83rd top exporter with $165.6 million and ABB is ranked 112th with $138.8 million in exports in 2018, according to Turkish Exporters Union’s Top 1,000 Exporters Research.
