Responding to the questions of journalists with the joint press conference held with Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, Russian Prime Minister Medvedev announced that last March, President Putin and President Erdoğan decided to create a Russian-Turkish investment fund with a capital of up to $1 billion to stimulate mutual investments.
Prime Minister Medvedev of Russia informed that this fund will also be determinant in joint projects with third countries.
Mersin Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant took an important place in the announcements of the two countries’ prime ministers. Medvedev said that Akkuyu NPP has be given the strategic investment status: “It is a project with strategic designation, it is slow in many respects, but it can accelerate. We aim that the first energy bloc will be commissioned in 2023, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey“.
What does it mean to become a strategic investment?
- Akkuyu NPP would be exempt from the 18% value added tax in all investment and operational stages.
- All machinery and equipment to be imported for the plant would be exempt from custom duties.
- Akkuyu A.S. would be entitled to a 90% discount in corporate taxes during the investment and operational stages.
- The Turkish government will pay for seven years the employer’s share in the social security premiums of all the company’s current and future employees.
- Rosatom will receive “without charge” the land where the investment is made and other lands that may be needed in the future.
- The 18% VAT levied on buildings and other structures built on the plant’s premises will be returned to the company.
Binali Yildirim, who spoke after Medvedev, said that Akkuyu NPP project will be accelerated to achieve the 1st phase before 2023 and added that the project has strategic value for Turkey.
The plant will have four reactors each producing 1,200MW of electrical power and will meet 10 percent of the country’s energy requirement with a total energy production of 4,800MW.
