Turkey says econ. reforms, discipline to continue

By Orhan Coskun

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's newly re-elected AK Party government will press on with structural reforms and privatization and will stick to its budget targets, Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan told Reuters on Sunday.

"We will make no concessions on fiscal discipline," he said in a telephone interview shortly after the AK Party claimed victory in Sunday's parliamentary poll.

"The elections will not affect the budget, the year-end targets will be met," he said.

Negotiations with the European Union, which were partially suspended at the end of last year, will speed up, said Unakitan, who was finance minister in the last AK Party government and is expected to keep the job in the new cabinet.

The last AK Party government, from 2002 to 2007, oversaw several big ticket privatizations which brought record foreign direct investment to Turkey.

Unakitan said that would continue in the second term, as it was a key pillar of Ankara's structural reform program.

"The economic program and structural reforms will continue in the same way," he said. "privatization will continue with the same determination."

Turkey's lira currency rallied more than 1 percent in Asian trade on hopes that a single-party AK government would continue with the reforms that made it popular with investors in its first term.

The AK Party came to power on the back of a deep financial crisis in 2002. Since then, economic growth has averaged about 7 percent a year and inflation has fallen sharply.