BURSA — The Uludağ Economic Summit, known as Turkey's Davos, kicked off on Friday. At the summit Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, ex-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Chairman of Borsa Istanbul İbrahim Turhan and others made statements about both the state of Turkish economy and recent economic trends across the world. During the twoday summit, business representatives, CEOs of large corporations and executive officers of regulatory and controller institutions will address attendees. On the first day of the summit, Babacan remarked that the sound structure of Turkey's national budget and banks played a critical role in preserving Turkey's stability.Babacan noted that the rate of public debt to national income declined from 45 percent to 35 percent over the past four years."During the same period, very high increases were witnessed in many other countries. We are among the few countries that are able to decrease public debt compared to national income in time of crisis," said Babacan, who added that the current level of account deficit is not alarming but it is still necessary to pay attention to its rapid escalation. Noting that the private sector and public debt stocks create risk areas, Babacan said that these two areas are under control. "Turkey has been experiencing some problems with aggregate savings. The present rate of aggregate savings is low. In this respect, it is necessary for the public sector to focus on budget discipline. We are placing particular importance on this issue."Chairman of the Turkish Exporters Assembly Mehmet Büyükekşi also spoke and said that Turkey's total exports tripled and exports with neighbors increased by 5.5 times in the last 10 years. "As you know, Turkey has an export target of $500 billion [TL 1.11 trillion] in 2023, in the 100th anniversary of the Republic. We certainly need new investments to achieve this goal. We have nearly more than tripled our current export figure of $152 billion. This seems impossible with regard to current investments. Due to the big saving deficits in Turkey, we absolutely need foreign capital investments. There is a huge competition in the world in terms of attracting investments. Even the U.S. puts forward new programs in order to attract investment even though it experienced the most severe earthquake in the world."Turhan said capital market funds that invest in Turkey are generally the ones that make long-term or medium-term analyses. He emphasized that these funds focus not on short-term incidents but rather on mediumand long-term basic dynamics of the country. Turhan also stressed that there is a global consensus on the fact that Turkey's medium- and long-term dynamics are positive. "Markets of all developing countries are competing with each other over the liquidity decreasing gradually in the world. The money may come to Turkey or to other countries. What is important here is to constantly maintain structural reforms that will reinforce the perception of the country's and economy's medium and long term investment."Straw said, "A bright future will embrace Turkey in the European Union. If Turkey completes stages like meeting the criteria of Copenhagen, its accession process to the EU will surely accelerate. Turkey already has a bright future thanks to the Custom Union.Turkey's need for Europe is equal to Europe's need for Turkey. After the financial crisis, many speculations were rumored as to the fact that the European Union and Eurozone will collapse. I do not believe that. Not only financial investments but also political ones are magnificent."The Chairman of Prime Ministry Investment Support and Promotion Agency İlker Aycı said, "We should reflect EU standards and quality on. We reached this quality in finance, banking and insurance sectors and investors reacted. We received investments worth over $40 billion."Aycı noted that more than 50 percent of direct investments have been in developing countries over the last few years and that developed countries are searching for ways to prevent developing countries from getting more shares and direct these bigger shares to them.