Turkey's Erdogan announces $30 billion in incentives for high tech areas

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey will launch a $5 billion package to boost its annual production of electric vehicles to one million cars, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, adding that Ankara would unveil other incentive packages for high tech areas totalling $30 billion.

Erdogan, speaking in Istanbul, said Turkey had paved the way for EV makers to invest in Turkey, namely via China's largest EV producer BYD agreeing to build a $1 billion production plant in the country. He also said Ankara wanted to be a major player in this area in the long-term.

"We are implementing a $5 billion incentive package in this area to increase our annual production capacity to at least one million units," Erdogan said.

He said the government planned another $5 billion investment package to build a semiconductor chip factory.

"With our call for batteries, we aim to become a regional production base by building a capacity of 80 gigawatt hours by 2030," he said, adding that a $4.5 billion incentive package would be introduced for this too.

Erdogan also said Turkey would provide $2.5 billion in grant support for solar cell facilities with up to 15 GW capacity, and said the government had allocated another $1.7 billion to manufacturing critical components in wind energy.

With all of these incentives, Erdogan said Turkey aimed to attract at least $20 billion in private sector investments, adding that Ankara would be announcing further details shortly.

(Reporting by Can Sezer and Tuvan Gumrukcu. Editing by Jane Merriman)