4 мая 2023 года в Ашхабаде состоялось праздничное мероприятие к 15-летней годовщине Программы подготовки управленческих кадров в Туркменистане.

Посол Федеративной Республики Германия в Туркменистане, Михаэль Уве Бирхофф открыл торжественное мероприятие и поприветствовал в своём выступлении высокопоставленных гостей и участвующих выпускников программы:

Esteemed Mr. Allakbayew, Deputy Minister of Finance and Economics of TKM,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this remarkable event. We are here today to celebrate 15 years of The Manager Training Programme (MTP), which was initiated by the Federal Govt. in 2008, in order to promote German business and trade relations with selected countries, among those TKM.

I am particularly pleased that we have among us today guests from Germany, Mr. Ulrich Niemann, responsible head of division for the MTP in the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and Ms. Isolde Heinz, Regional Manager for the MTP of the German International Cooperation Agency GIZ in Bonn. And I would also like to warmly welcome a number of Turkmen participants having completed the MTP and who later on will probably share with us some of their experience.

Today’s event is so remarkable, as it represents the first opportunity for the collaborating German and Turkmen Partners of the MTP to meet in person and to review the process of 15 years with Turkmen participants of the programme. It is a good day for the responsible representatives of the German and Turkmen governments, as well as a good day for German-Turkmen relations in general, which are just about to resurge again after the stifling constraints of the Pandemic.

Looking back today, shows us that more than 15.000 executives from 17 countries have completed the programme. The MTP enables a number of business executives from participating countries to travel to GER and get in personal contact to the German business community. It also encourages in particular German SMEs to do business with their partners in those countries.

Around 300 Turkmen business executives have participated until today in GER and it is thanks to the fruitful cooperation between the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action AND the Ministry of Finance and Economics of TKM that this programme has become a success story that would not have been possible without the excellent performance of GIZ, the German international cooperation agency, which has a mandate to coordinate and implement the necessary steps of designing the individual programmes and making updates whenever necessary.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the MTP is designed to accept participants from all economic sectors. As I already mentioned, GER and TKM are just about to strenghten again their economic and trade relations after the global Pandemic. It would be more than obvious to use the MTP in this context to support and foster the traditionally close and friendly relations between our countries by keeping in mind the needs as well as the current economic and political focus of both countries when discussing the selection process for a new group of Turkmen participants of the programme.

The projected founding of an Alumni association of MTP participants from TKM would be an excellent opportunity to strenghten expertise in this country as to further deepening economic and trade relations between GER and TKM.

To conclude, let me underline once more that the MTP is a great example of German-Turkmen cooperation, congratulations for 15 years of successful work, I wish and hope that we will see many more years of this trustful and mutually beneficial cooperation.

Thank you