Chile and Turkey began their third round of negotiations on inking a free trade agreement (FTA) on Wednesday.

The Chilean team was headed by Carlos Furche, director of the International Economic Relations of the Chilean Foreign Ministry, and the Turkish side was led by Cemalettin Damlaci, general director of the EU affairs of the Undersecretariat of the Foreign Trade Ministry.

The negotiations were expected to focus on such issues as market access, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical obstacles for commerce and dispute solutions.

Furche said Chile is working on deepening commercial ties with those emerging countries which enjoy fast development and Turkey is one of them.

Turkey´s average economic growth in the last four years reached 7.1 percent, and it is regarded as a gateway to a region with great development potential.

Bilateral trade between Chile and Turkey reached 1.303 billion U.S. dollars in 2007, an increase of some 193 percent from 2006.

Source: Xinhua