One of the largest Turkish textile factories, AYKA Textile Industry and Trade Incorporated, founded in 1988 in Istanbul has started relocating its garment factory to Ethiopia, beginning last month, Fortune, weekly English tabloid said Sunday.

It is hoping that cheap labour force as well as nominal taxes and investment incentives the Federal Government has provided to the textile sector would make it remain internationally competitive, the newspaper said.

The Turkish company has established in June 2006, a local subsidiary company, AYKA Addis Plc. with a capital of 100 million birr and registered under three shareholders AYKA Textile, Yusuf Aydaniz and Gurkay Kavaliki.

The company also wants to make use of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a quota and duty-free privilege the United States granted to African countries.

With its 50 million USD export worldwide in 2004, AYKA is the largest such investment to have entered into Ethiopia, the newspaper, said quoting an official of Industry Development Department of the Ministry of Trade and Industry as saying.

The Ministry has deployed one of its experts to assist AYKA in fulfilling infrastructural needs.

The company has been granted 15,000 sqm of plot at Alem Gena, 18-km west of Addis, from the Oromia Investment Commission.

Construction works on the plot have begun two weeks ago , after having imported four units of machinery, including excavator trucks and lobed AYKA bar also booked slot in one of the vessels by the Ethiopian Shipping Lines to import 700 tons of steel, the newspaper quoted sources as saying.

The state-owned, Weyra and Bekelcha transport companies are contracted to transport the imported bars after they have arrived at the Port of Djibouti.

According to a reliable source, all these companies will be transporting imported items at a cost in order to show Ethiopia as an appealing investment destination to a company that has pledged to invest one billion birr over the next two years.

Source: The Ethiopian Herald