Turkey eyes $500M carpet export to US by end of 2018

By Kerem Kocalar

GAZIANTEP (AA) - Turkey targets $500 million of carpet export to the U.S. by the of 2018, a regional carpet export association head said on Monday.

Ahmet Kaplan, the head of Southeast Anatolia Carpet Exporters Association (GAHIB), told Anadolu Agency that the U.S. comes at the first place as the major market of carpet export.

“By the end of the year, we will have exported one third of $1.5 billion of carpet to the U.S.,” Kaplan said.

Turkey has exported $350 million of carpet to the U.S. in the first nine months of the 2018, he added.

Kaplan said Saudi Arabia and Iraq followed the U.S. as major markets for Turkish carpet export.

Gaziantep, a southeastern Turkish province, manufactures 30 percent of the machine-woven carpets worldwide, while it produces 90 percent of Turkish carpets, Kaplan stated.

He said Gaziantep performed $1.1 billion of carpet exports in the first nine months of 2018, adding that it targets $1.5 billion export at the end of the year.