Turkish premier addresses B-20 meeting in Cannes

CANNES (A.A) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday delivered a speech at a Cannes meeting of the B-20 group that brings together business and labor union leaders to discuss issues such as global governance, employment, economic growth and social justice. "Governments should be realist, cautious and consistent when drawing up their economic programs. Lately, we have been witnessing some contrary examples in Europe," Erdogan told the meeting.         Erdogan said the future of global economy still faced some serious risks and challenges as soaring public debts, structural issues in financial sector, unemployment and global imbalances stood as major obstacles against a powerful global recovery and resumption of stability. "The picture tells us that we need to take some very tough measures and makes it inevitable for us to boost cooperation more than ever. Moreover, developed countries should announce solid, well-planned and credible financial policies and implement them," Erdogan said.   Touching on Turkey's economic performance, Erdogan said his country had taken "target-oriented and selective fiscal and monetary expansion measures" during the initial stages of the crisis. "Measures we have taken helped economy's wheels run again and prevented further deepening of recession. In September 2009 when the crisis impact was felt the hardest, we announced a medium term economic program based on conservative estimates and re-controlled our public debt stock which worsened due to the crisis," Erdogan said.  Erdogan said Turkey's economy grew 9 percent in 2010 and in 2011 growth rate went above 10 percent with a nine percent unemployment rate. "Turkey's performance to weather the crisis has shown that fiscal discipline and growth can co-exist," Erdogan said.