The financial center is a rental project.

Hülya K. ORUÇOĞLU

It was emphasized that the Istanbul Financial Center (IFC), which is expected to compete with the world’s leading financial centers, needs much more than a building to fulfill its purpose. The project, which took 12 years to build, was estimated to cost 4.5 billion lira and the bill came to TL 65 billion.

The IFC Banks Stage was inaugurated by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the day before. Erdoğan opened with the words “We said and we will make Istanbul one of the world’s leading financial centers.”

Economists commented on IFC as ‘just a construction project’. Economist Murat Kubilay said: “For the financial center, the country must have a strong volume of capital. This can be compared to someone who has no money and wants to set up a bank. There is no capital. The foreign debt is 459 billion dollars. So is there a reputation? He is not in this power,” he said.

Murat Kubilay

BUILDING STACK LEFT IN HAND

Kubilay, who said: “This project was wrong from the beginning,” said: “They even had difficulties financing its construction. Then they diverted the route to the Islamic financial center, but there were no favorable conditions there either. at hand, possibly with a solid infrastructure. Construction rent is like building luxury residences…”, he said.

Bilge Yılmaz, Chairman of Economic Policy of the IYI Party, shared on his social media account: “Billions of lira were made in unproductive openings in Istanbul for the sake of a political spectacle. The giant buildings called ‘Finance Center’ are not “They are more than construction projects. You cannot turn a country into a financial center where the law, property rights, most importantly, free market conditions and most importantly trust are destroyed.”

bilge yilmaz

Istanbul is ranked 90th in the world

According to the Global Financial Centers Index, New York is the most important financial center in the world, followed by London, Singapore, Hong Kong and San Francisco. San Francisco is followed by Los Angeles, Shanghai, Chicago, Boston and Seoul. Istanbul, on the other hand, can only rank 90th among financial centers. The IFM project was announced in 2008. The first excavation for the project, which was announced to cost 4.5 billion lira, was only done in 2014. The opening date was postponed to 2016, then 2018, then 2020, and finally 2023. When the project was completed, its cost exceeded 65 billion lire.