Abdurrahman Kaan, President of the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen Association (MÜSİAD), made a written assessment regarding the support package announced by Minister of Treasury and Finance Berat Albayrak for SMEs and enterprises.
Kaan noted the following in his statement:
As in the past, in the future too the Turkish economy will rise on the shoulders of our SMEs, which realize %55 of gross investments, %73 of total employment, %62 of total turnover and %55 of total exports. Enabling the productivity and dynamism of our SMEs to operate at full capacity will be possible by resolving the problem of access to financing of enterprises of this scale. In this context, we think that the TRY 25 billion support to be offered to our SMEs under the guarantee of the Ministry of Treasury and Finance and with the participation of many banks will be of the nature of a lifeline for the Turkish economy.
We believe that, with the reduction of the financing burden of our SMEs, the new investments that decreased by %13 on an annual basis in the first quarter of 2019 will regain momentum, and that the unemployment rate, which reached the level of %14.7 as of February, will be brought down to far more reasonable levels. In addition to this, together with the increase in consumer prices which we estimate will be realized at far lower levels than its current position as of the last quarter of the year, indexing the costs of the loans to be provided to SMEs to inflation will create a significant advantage for our enterprises benefiting from the supports.
On this occasion, as MÜSİAD, we state once again that we will be the supporter of every kind of opportunity to be provided to our SMEs, which constitute a very significant part of our members, which produce continuously, provide added value and stubbornly continue on their way regardless of the risks within the existing capital system.