Sabanci Group plans to spend up to US$3bn in the next five years building new power stations and electricity distribution systems to help feed the country’s expanding economy.  The company is also anxious to maintain the pace of recent sales growth, and hopes to increase its annual revenues of US$10.6bn last year to about US$30bn in 2015, according to Guler Sabanci, chairman. 
 
Ms Sabanci said the group planned to build three more power plants in the next five years that would add more than 800MW of power. She said Sabanci was talking to the three main producers of electricity turbines - General Electric of the US, Alstom of France and Germany’s Siemens - about providing the generating systems for these projects. But no decision had been taken on which suppliers to choose. 
  "We are now responsible for providing two per cent of the electricity produced in Turkey but over the next few years we could increase this to 10 per cent," she said. Most of Turkey’s power needs are now met from government-owned electricity generation plants but Ms Sabanci said she saw a stronger role in the next few years for the private sector, particularly given Ankara’s interests in privatisation of state-owned industrial assets. 
 
Of last year’s revenues, 20 per cent came from sales outside Turkey. The group has several joint ventures with large foreign businesses including Japan’s Toyota car maker and Heidelberg Cement of Germany.  Ms Sabanci said the country was "on track" to join the EU in about 10 years after accession talks.