BEIRUT: Turkey, Lebanon , Jordan and Syria have agreed to set-up a regional agreement that would allow for free trade and travel between the four countries. The news, first reported by the Lebanese business website iloubnan.info, would mean the removal of visas for travel between the four countries, as well as the establishment of a joint cooperation council to develop a free trade zone. The deal, signed by the foreign ministers of the four countries on the sidelines of the Turkey-Arab Cooperation Forum in Istanbul , comes only one week after Turkey presented a range of measures to strengthen its economic ties with its eastwards neighbors, including Syria , Iraq and Iran . Turkey and Syria already signed a similar agreement in 2008, leading to a $300 million increase in trade flow between the two countries between 2008 and 2009, a trend that is expected to continue despite continued US sanctions on Syria . Dr. Yusuf Mansur, a Jordanian economic consultant, said the agreement brings great perks for Jordan . “We export fruit and vegetable to Lebanon and it's an important market,” Mansur told The Media Line. “It's important that we have such an agreement to remove any trade barriers.” “If trade can come via land that's preferable to the sea,” he said regarding trade with Turkey . “The many cultural ties with Turkey will make it work and there will be a great substitution in Turkey of Jordanian goods instead of European Union goods.” Analysts said the free trade zone would stand to benefit from are the increasing levels off Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Lebanon , a country seen as a safe economy during troubled economic times. “There is indeed a substantial increase of foreign direct investment in Lebanon ,” Marcus Marktanner, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at the American University of Beirut , told The Media Line. “What really seems to matter currently is the deterioration of the global investment climate in general, and the economic meltdown in the Gulf in particular. But Lebanon has been relatively isolated from global economic dynamics.”
