Turkey Customs Taxes to Be Collected by Government Banks Only

(Bloomberg) -- Turkey is working on a new regulation to allow only state banks to collect customs levies, which makes up about a fifth of the central government’s tax income, according to an official.

The new measure will come into force on March 21, the official said, asking not to be identified as the plan hasn’t been made public.

The change comes as the government is pressing lenders to focus on expanding credit, while cutting down other sources of revenues. Authorities have recently lowered some of the fees banks earn on transactions, leaving banks with only a handful of commissions they can charge clients.

Policy makers have criticized private lenders for failing to boost credit at the same pace as state lenders. Before the push for lower charges began, the nation’s anti-trust authorities started a preliminary probe into more than 20 banks to determine whether they violated competition law in offering deposit, credit, foreign-exchange and brokerage services to clients.

Customs administrations collected 11.6 billion liras ($1.9 billion) in taxes out of a total of 67.4 billion liras the government collected in January, according to data published by the Trade Ministry.

To contact the reporter on this story: Firat Kozok in Ankara at fkozok@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, ;Riad Hamade at rhamade@bloomberg.net, Cagan Koc

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