By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA

Turkey received nearly $4.5 billion equity investment from the European Union between January and November last year, marking a 64.3 percent rise year-on-year, according to Ministry of Economy Tuesday.

In terms of equity investment, direct inflow from the EU countries amounted to 68 percent of the 11-month inflow to Turkey -- around $6.6 billion in total.

According to ministry figures, Netherlands ($1.64 billion), Austria ($306 million) and Germany ($241 million) were among top sources of capital inflow.

Over the same period, financial intermediation sector received the highest amount of international capital with $1.43 billion, followed by transport/communication/storage sector -- $1.2 billion.

The manufacturing sector and electricity/gas/water supply sector received $1.11 billion and $933 million inflow, respectively.

From January to November last year, net foreign direct investment (FDI) in Turkey stood at $9.82 billion, compared with $10.85 billion FDI in the same period previous year -- a 9.5 percent fall.

A total of 5,145 new foreign-backed companies were established in Turkey, including 55 branch offices, while 187 domestic companies benefited from overseas participants in the period of January-November 2017.

As of November, more than 58,000 companies with international capital are operating in Turkey, of which 38 percent are linked with EU member states.

Nearly 22,000 of these companies are operating in the retail and wholesale trade sector. The other major sectors are real estate renting and business activities with 9,492 firms, and manufacturing with 6,956 companies.