BRANCH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
17 MARCH 2021
ADANA
Honourable District Governor,
Honourable Mayors,
Esteemed Members of our Board of Directors,
Esteemed Presidents and Representatives of the Business and Political World, of NGOs and of our Chambers, Esteemed President and Members of our MÜSİAD Adana Branch,
Esteemed Members of the Press,
I welcome you to the General Assembly of our Adana Branch and respectfully greet you all. Distinguished Guests,
We are in Adana, the sixth most populous city of Türkiye. The city, one of the important trade centres of our country, has especially in recent years also begun to be known for its cultural events and its delicious cuisine. Adana's legendary dishes and its kebab are mentioned right after the name of the city not only in our country but in many countries. Adana has a highly critical geostrategic position. This obliges our city to make the right plans both in terms of its natural resources and in terms of operating those resources and transferring them within supply chains to our country and abroad.
Adana is the marketing and distribution centre of the Çukurova agricultural region, where cotton, wheat, soybeans, barley, grapes and citrus fruits are produced in large quantities. Half of the maize and soybeans grown in Türkiye is produced in Adana. %34 of the peanuts and %29 of the oranges in Türkiye are grown in Adana. Most of the farming and agriculture-based companies in the region have opened their head offices in Adana.
The textile and leather industries are major industrial branches that account for %30 of Adana's production, and facilities producing vegetable oil and processed food are also numerous.
Together with agriculture, livestock farming too, thanks to the opportunities afforded by geographical conditions, contributes to the Adana economy above the average of the national economy. In addition to cattle and small
livestock farming, seafood production also holds an important place in Yumurtalık and Karataş, the districts of Adana that have a coastline on the Mediterranean.
Across the province of Adana the animal stock varies according to the province's geographical situation, climate conditions and agricultural character. In the plains, since all areas are reserved for cultivation, barn livestock farming is more common. In places close to the city centre, fattening livestock and poultry farming are practised, while in mountainous and forested areas sheep and goats are raised.
Livestock is constantly shipped from Adana to neighbouring provinces and countries. In addition, %80 of the incoming live animals and animal products arrive from the Eastern Anatolia Region and the South-eastern Anatolia Region.
On the other hand, although it has experienced some decline, Adana has managed to keep its production and foreign trade at a level that satisfies us.
This is precisely the recognition we need for our cities to become brands. Adana must of course be one of the most important assets and one of the pilot areas of our project which I will address in detail shortly, the one we have named “Developing Cities Through Their Distinctive Values”, that is, determining criteria for valuing cities' own assets by comparing our strategic cities with their counterparts around the world, and matching cities. It is essential that such an enormous potential, that Adana, now be counted among brand cities and that planning be carried out on behalf of city economies.
Distinguished Guests,
With little time left before I hand over the Presidency, I have been constantly on the move, both for my homeland and for our MÜSİAD, within which I have grown since its foundation and in every stage of which I have served, in order to take the pulse of Anatolia at every opportunity, to come together with our members, to be in touch with them, and to convey sectoral problems to the relevant authorities by listening to them directly from those concerned. I can say that the number of days I have spent at the İstanbul Head Office is very few compared with the time I have spent travelling. This gives me both joy and honour. Because MÜSİAD is not a capital
group confined to a single region with a narrow sphere of influence. MÜSİAD is the most vivid witness of this country's social, political and economic history and indeed one of the elements that built it.
The year 2020 challenged us greatly. The process that began with a health crisis turned over time into a global economic crisis as the economic balances of countries were disrupted, and it does not seem possible that this process will end overnight.
This process, to which we have gradually become accustomed and which has almost become our new normal, has given us new ways of living and working, and at the same time created new perceptions of threat and opportunity. In order to see these opportunities and threats, visiting our provinces one by one and identifying their constraints as well as their potential has been an important undertaking for drawing up each city's own geostrategic progress and economic road map. We have completed this. Now, through our branch general assemblies, I once again have the pleasure of being in contact with you in line with this aim of ours. Because in the world of the future it will not be states but cities that compete.
When you look today, cities that stand out with their domestic production and their contribution to GDP, multiplying the national income of many states, can, as brand values, have even more say in global world production than their own countries. And believe me, this comes through the concept of self-sufficiency. Discovering each city's distinctive and strategic values, resources and sectors and directing and putting them to work correctly — this is correct planning.
My dear friends, the pandemic in fact showed us a reality we had never taken into account: when production stopped all over the world and all doors were closed, that is, when everyone, every nation was left on its own, how was everyone going to fend for themselves? While for years we produced and traded with globalization and the economic wind it spread across the world, with the effect of the pandemic globalization suddenly turned into a model whose very existence is questioned. As the new balances of power were being calculated, the Asian economies came to the fore both as a production base and as the new centre of supply and logistics lines. In the new world order, in which protectionist policies increasingly come to the fore, unfortunately new threat perceptions have begun to form for us. Of course, foremost among these are: the effective use of agricultural land, food sufficiency, food security, food prices that will rise due to drought and the inflationary pressure this will create all over the world, the establishment of national
policies on seed, reducing imports in food to a minimum, and entering the category of self-sufficient countries.
Alongside all this, the difficult conditions brought by climate change push us towards producing on the basis of new policies in 2021 and beyond. The fundamental discourse that the Green Deal in fact obliges us to adopt is the effective and efficient use of the increasingly scarce basic resources, that is, of water and soil. I say it at every opportunity: energy is of course one of the most important criteria forming the balance of power for the world economy. However, in the coming period new balances will be established over a far more vital resource: WATER! The fundamental conflicts that perhaps await us in the future will be the sharing of water resources and water wars.
My dear friends,
As you know, in February 2021 the Agricultural PPI rose by %2.61 compared with the previous month, by %5.72 compared with December of the previous year, by %21.32 compared with the same month of the previous year and by %16.67 according to the twelve-month averages. The other sub-groups showing the highest increase compared with the same month of the previous year were cereals (excluding rice), pulses and oilseeds with %29.86, and fibre crops with %29.80.
The sub-groups showing the lowest annual increase were other tree and bush fruits and nuts with %1.11, vegetables and melons-watermelons, roots and tubers with %5.08, and oily fruits with %14.55. Among the sub-groups, the other sub-groups showing the highest increase compared with the previous month were other tree and bush fruits and nuts with %3.81, and live cattle (including buffalo) and the raw milk obtained from them with %3.42. (SEED and BREEDING STOCK RAISING IN LIVESTOCK FARMING)
What do these figures actually tell us:
1. The Agricultural PPI data announced for the February period indicated that the inflationary pressure on food products continues. In this period, of the 86 items covered in the index, the average price of 22 items decreased while the average price of 61 items increased.
2. As will be recalled, the Global Food Price Index announced by the United Nations also rose by 4.3 percent in January, reaching its highest level since July 2014.
3. In the light of these developments, we can predict that we will continue to feel the pressure of food on inflation in the coming months. At least throughout the first half of this year, food inflation will continue to remain on the agenda.
4. TÜİK's raising of the weight of the Food group, which has a share of %22.77, by 3.17 points to the level of %25.94 by changing the weights in the inflation basket, taking into account the consumption conditions and habits that have changed with the effect of the pandemic, will also push inflation upwards.
Coming to the potential in Adana;
In this distinguished region of ours, Çukurova, where cotton, wheat, soybeans, barley, grapes and citrus fruits are produced in large quantities, continues to be known as the marketing and distribution centre of the agricultural region.
Adana, which ranked 14th among the provinces of Türkiye with the highest exports in 2020, delivered a strong performance with USD 1.8 billion, despite recording a decrease of %4.1 compared with the previous year.
In this period the city exported goods and services to a total of 180 countries, with the top three places taken by Iraq, Germany and the Netherlands.
Dear Friends,
The whole world left 2020 behind as a difficult year. Especially since the beginning of 2018, we had insistently emphasized that the global economic system was under considerable strain and that we might have to face a serious commodity crisis.
But the breaking point of this expected crisis came from a place no one could have predicted: the Global Pandemic. Unlike the others, this crisis did not have an economic basis, but in terms of its effects it made us question the economic system, which came to a standstill all over the world.
From this point on, the global economic system gradually gave way to unitary structures and, for countries, to the rule of self-sufficiency. While we were expecting sharp paradigm
shifts after the pandemic, we were confronted with a statist capitalism, and this model was in fact not at all unfamiliar to us. Because in a logic based on national economies the state would make its regulatory duty and weight over the economy felt more and more, and so it is happening. If you notice, these days the state is stepping in as an effective market player far beyond market regulation in many sectors and especially in food, within the scope of the fight against inflation.
As long as the pandemic continues and until it ends completely all over the world, these practices will gradually persist both in our country and in the world. However, in the face of these policies, we as the business world will also need new room for manoeuvre in order to protect our competitiveness and profitability. Statist capitalism and the direct regulation of the market by the concept of the social state are not new concepts. However, this situation must not leave negative effects on the competitive advantages of the private sector either. (AGRICULTURAL CREDIT COOPERATIVES, RETAIL LAW)
Today, in our country and in many countries of the world, the state's areas of intervention are steadily expanding because of income injustice, capital lost in the middle-income trap, and rising prices of goods and services. Despite this, it is also possible to say that global world capital is once again flowing from developed countries towards developing countries such as ours. However, the important point here is not that this capital flow enters and exits with the logic of momentary fund movements; it is that it provides production, investment and employment through direct investments in our country. And realizing this is again in our hands.
Distinguished Guests,
As I said at the beginning of my speech, one of the reasons why I visit the provinces one by one instead of sitting at the centre is to identify promising companies for the execution of industrialization, that is, in order to form appropriate industrial policies and make them work in the field, and at the same time to examine the potential of these provinces comparatively with their existing companies. My project of branding the provinces and turning their existing assets into value, that is, of properly identifying their potential and increasing the value of the provinces through investments suited to that potential, turned into a fairly comprehensive study at the end of my travels. Every city has its own distinctive
values. Turning these into high value-added assets brands that city and increases its contribution to GDP. The basic starting point of this study was to compare our cities with cities abroad that have similar characteristics according to certain criteria, and to apply in our cities as well the methods and processes of the value added produced by those examples in the world.
We named this study “Developing Cities Through Their Distinctive Values”. That is, determining criteria for valuing their own assets by comparing them with their counterparts around the world, and city matching. At this point, the most important of the comparison criteria is the corporate strength that the city possesses. Determining a correct industrialization policy in fact means finding, supporting, scaling up and increasing the capital strength of promising companies that will keep this economy standing in order to create city economies, and carrying out the domestic and national production drive in a way that both brands the cities and strengthens the companies. I call this putting city economies to work for the execution of industrialization.
Distinguished guests,
Because of the conjuncture, our state organs have of course had to make some temporary policies and will continue to do so. The important point here is not to hold back from supporting our state in the process we are going through. We are receiving the first-period outputs of the steps taken to prevent the excessive depreciation of the Turkish lira and the course of high inflation, for example of the adjustment in credit costs.
The insistent and determined stance of the economic administration and of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye in the fight against inflation, and their preference for cooperating with all economic stakeholders in order to develop policy at this stage, of course gave hope to business people, to the end consumer and to foreign capital alike. So up to this point there is certainly a movement in the right direction. However, all these steps are only paths leading towards the main arterial road that must be taken. They are useful, they buy time, but they do not offer a final solution. They do not last forever. After a while the market will demand from you more lasting and fundamental moves, that is, an economic plan.
As I have expressed in my various statements and indeed in the meeting we held with the Central Bank team, if cyclical adjustments are compulsory, we of course show
respect for the decision taken by our state on this matter. However, we voice our red line especially on the issue of interest at every opportunity. Likewise, for us a permanent and sustainable price level and growth trend can only come through a planned production policy and the synchronization of production, trade and investment.
In September 2018 I made a statement to Anadolu Agency: “In our country, consumption has for a long time exceeded production. The solution to the problems is closely related to being able to reverse this fact. That is, by moving to an understanding of “consuming by producing”, it is possible to overcome all problems, above all the economic ones. Only to the extent that we succeed in producing can we become the rising country of this century. Otherwise, we may come face to face with losing even our current gains." I said.
The fact that at the point we have reached today the plans for combating inflation will be made along this axis is also encouraging.
Production alone is not enough. It is essential that we plan on the basis of a sales-oriented production model. That is, to produce after guaranteeing the market and the sale. But this too is not enough. After correctly identifying domestic demand, foreign trade planning is needed. Otherwise you start importing while speaking of full warehouses. And this adversely affects your terms of trade. This too is not enough: production and trade require the continuity and sustainability of investment. We have called this end-to-end systematic approach the synchronization of production, trade and investment. And the fact that these matters were expressly highlighted in the announced Economic Reform Package and recorded as a state policy makes us happy and honours us for having been of some benefit in this regard.
Distinguished Guests,
I made statements in various media about the Economic Reform Package announced last week. It contains innovations that please us both in terms of its main headings and in terms of the boards established to achieve economic coordination and to gather scattered data. However, the package in fact also shows us the process in which industrialists, that is, we ourselves, must be far more active and productive from this point on.
The pandemic reminded us of such concepts that these became the new elements of power by which the future will be shaped: food and agricultural security, renewable energy and energy investments, new lines in logistics, mergers and acquisitions, economic security, insurance and reinsurance, smart cities, infrastructure and superstructure investments abroad, production bases and campuses, pharmaceutical raw material production, technical textiles and many more I cannot list. Especially the strategic importance of derivative energy resources and mining investments, and the new financial system and investment instruments that will emerge in this field regarding the Green Deal, are new agendas we have not encountered before but of which we must become aware and for which we must prepare as soon as possible. These concepts were the names of our committees during our Renewal process. At a time when no one knew or could utter these concepts, we made them strategic goals and set up committees. Perhaps the fact that the same headings now appear in our country's reform package and have become the new resource and investment management items of the new world is an answer to the criticism we received at that time. Praise be to God, we saw these too.
While the global economy, which contracted sharply in 2020, is projected to recover relatively in 2021, forecast uncertainty remains high depending on the course of the pandemic. Our country, on the other hand, is among the leading countries that have come through this difficult process with the least damage. As is known, the Turkish economy, which grew by %5.9 in the last quarter of 2020, was the country that recorded the highest growth among the G20 countries in that period after China. Across 2020 as a whole, the Turkish economy grew by %1.8 and displayed a performance that surprised all the international institutions that had made contraction forecasts for it at the beginning of the year.
It would not be wrong to say that the Renewed Normalization process will increase the revival of both the services and the production sectors, and that this will be reflected positively in our national income in 2021. However, the determining factor here is again the course of the pandemic and the effectiveness of the vaccination efforts. For, in the event that we face a third wave, in order to compensate for the possible capital loss we would suffer again, we must continue production without pause in certain regions, exactly as China did, and move to increase our stocks.
And this of course comes through the logic of establishing safe production bases in which every stage has been thought through. In this model, whose details I will address shortly, our basic aim is to develop the strategy China pursued
under the conditions of our country with even more advanced arrangements and with a logic that gives priority to people and nature.
Increasing the self-sufficiency policies of all our sectors in critical positions in domestic and national production, and especially determining a new strategy oriented towards foreign trade, would be a correct step. We saw years ago the fundamental concept the world has arrived at today: Strategic Autonomy. That is, self-sufficiency in the domestic and national sense in critical sectors and being able to have a say on the world production-trade-investment line. Food security, the defence industry, information technology and data security, and the pharmaceutical industry are among the most important items of these.
Distinguished guests,
The COVID 19 process is not a process that will end overnight. Even if the vaccination efforts are completely finished, experts state that social immunity will take time. That is, we have just as far again to go. While all this is happening, a new way of life is in fact quietly entering our lives and we are calmly adapting to these new rules.
Of course there is a social fatigue, but at the same time we can say that there has been a calming in our reaction mechanisms. In the end, the brain provides adaptation and habituation to every state of mind after a while. Therefore many rules we found strange last year have been normalized today. In a year's time they will be a habit. Such as eating and drinking habits, shopping habits, the new models tested in working systems and the advantages they bring. It is also certain that we will be on alert for quite some time.
Moreover, even if the COVID process ends completely, there are two more major problems awaiting us: climate change and biological terror or armament. Therefore, in this process every country is necessarily making its own backup plans. In every field, from production to security, measures will be taken against a possible recurrence. In order for us to reflect this advantage into the field with all its parameters, we must prepare the manufacturing industry very well for the medium- and long-term transformation process brought by Covid-19. For there is an area of opportunity before us in which, by using it to develop our R&D and innovation capacity and our workforce competencies, we can make a serious leap in the global economy in the long term.
Distinguished Guests,
Look, it is not by coincidence: now read once again the names of the committees of our Renewal process, which we launched two years ago by analysing these days very well and by drawing up a truly strategic road map. You will see how the line drawn in 2018 designed a path leading all the way to 2023-2030. We set out this vision years ago, before anyone else saw it.
We said the Committee on New Roads and Approaches in Logistics. Look, now logistics companies and the new routes they draw are directing world trade. We said the Committee on Domestic and National Production Planning; look, now the basic starting point of unitary economic structures has become domestic and national production planning.
We said the Committee on Energy and Mining Management and Investments; today an entirely different area of economic sharing is forming in the name of energy security and new mineral deposits. We said the Committee on Industrial Zones and Campuses; look, today establishing production bases has become an indispensable field of investment all over the world.
We said the Committee on Smart Cities and City Economies; after us it became a policy at the Presidency level and was written into the 11th Development plan. indeed, the projects launched across the EU for the matching of cities showed how right and far-sighted we were on this matter. There are many more examples: Gastro-economy, Rural development, Mergers and acquisitions, Export Matching… These strategies, which at one time we had difficulty understanding and for which we even criticized those who conceived and built them, look, today they have become the world's new turning points. D
Now Türkiye too, with the same logic and as our Honourable President has also stated, has entered a process of renewal and launched a new reform movement.
Distinguished Guests,
We are not an island country. We are a country surrounded by a large number of neighbouring countries along our borders or on our axis. Yes, a country encircled by so many neighbours must be on alert at all times in the face of diplomatic and military conditions politically, but it is also fortunate in the economic and commercial sense. Because every
neighbour is a new bond, a new relationship, a new commercial alliance. And here important duties fall to capital organizations such as ours. Non-governmental organizations spread over a wide area like ours are like a velvet glove worn over the iron hand of the state. They can rebuild and even repair strained relations in the background through the channel of economic diplomacy by establishing trade and investment networks. We too, through both our commercial diplomacy network and our reporting system that gives priority to economic intelligence, are carrying commercial neighbourliness beyond borders.
It is precisely for this purpose that we restructured our local and global networks and designed the MÜSİAD Trade and Investment Agencies System. On the state side of this system we received the support of the Presidency of Strategy and Budget and of the Investment Office. The aim of this system is to bring the investment or production partnerships our country needs together with foreign demand, and at the same time to bring foreign capital together with domestic stakeholders through an end-to-end support mechanism in the process of investing in Türkiye. On this matter the Investment Office and MÜSİAD will share their own member and investor portfolios, and the contribution of new investments coming to Türkiye to the industrialization drive will be increased. The system we have named MÜSİAD INVEST is the management model for the cash flow in this process. I would like to announce here that in the new term we will operate these structures in full integration in all our branches and representative offices.
Our faith in our country and in our country's potential is complete, dear friends. Whatever was said to be impossible, we did during the pandemic, praise be to God.
In 2020, a year that was economically difficult, we held one of the most important fairs of Türkiye.
We held MÜSİAD EXPO 2020, the largest fair held after the pandemic, which attracted intense interest from both exhibitors and visitors, with broad participation and completed it successfully. Nearly 15 thousand visitors from 102 countries, led by the countries of Europe, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Africa and MENA, attended the four-day fair. At the fair, which we held with the slogan “Global Trade Is Here”, we hosted 400 purchasing delegations from 50 countries. EXPO 2020, which we held at the İstanbul TÜYAP Fair and Congress Centre and which was attended by business people, politicians and academics from every region of the world, enabled our business people to open up to new collaborations while also allowing foreign investors to examine investment opportunities in our country closely.
Distinguished Guests,
As MÜSİAD, we support our fellow travellers with 89 points in Türkiye and 225 contact points in 95 countries around the world. And now we are launching a brand-new restructuring movement to unite them with a strong trade and investment network.
We, together with each of our members, have brought this valuable structure, which works harder every day to be of benefit to the Turkish economy and nation with the employment it provides for 2 million people, to this point. We do this with our institutional culture, our accumulated knowledge and the strength we draw from our organization. By processing the information we obtain through you from domestic and international regions, we are creating an important database. As a result of this, we present to the business world a picture that sets out all the risks, opportunities and current problems.
As you know, we launched our Renewal process in order to prepare in advance for the new world system. Our motto in setting out was “Together”.
We have fulfilled almost all the initiatives we planned and promised within the framework of our Renewal process. Now we are reaping the fruits of this process with our large-scale projects.
As MÜSİAD, we are developing projects aimed at increasing the contribution made to the national economy and at improving the culture of partnership among our members.
For this purpose, our 23 committees in total under the roof of the MÜSİAD ASSEMBLY, which we established during the Renewal process, have begun to gather the potential investors and industrialists in Anatolia around certain projects, with projects suited to their own thematic or sectoral fields. These projects have begun to encourage the capital strength in Anatolia to invest in or become a partner in projects.
For example, with our Investment and Production Bases Project we have created a model that will, by building living and production zones in which all their needs will be met in the same environment for our small-scale companies that struggle to produce in narrow spaces and therefore cannot reach scale, turn them in time into institutionalized companies ready to move to organized industrial zones. We have completed the first prototype of this model, and we are soon beginning the construction of the second as well..
In order to enter the world's top ten economies and for the epidemics and disasters that are likely to recur under any circumstances, we have to establish production bases. By establishing production bases, it becomes possible to protect companies, employees and production in epidemic or severe disaster situations and to keep them going without a full lockdown.
We have named this model, in short, SME INCUBATION CENTRES. This model, in which all the needs of SMEs, from education to accommodation, from social activities to artistic environments, are met within the same living space, aims to create a safe production and living area both for our workers and for our producers and their families.
This project of ours has also been one of our undertakings planned at the centre and transferred towards Anatolia. At the same time, this project of ours was registered as a project under state auspices by the Presidency of Strategy and Budget within the scope of YOİKK.
In the same way, with our Smart Agricultural Cities Project we have launched an initiative to encourage rural development and thereby support reverse migration and achieve a homogeneous population structure. We presented this to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as a model.
With the Smart Agricultural Cities Model, we have developed an initiative to encourage rural life and support rural development, with opportunities targeting the population crowded into big cities and especially women's and young people's enterprises.
Today many of our members in Anatolia are carrying out preparatory work to implement this initiative in their own regions.
Many more projects like these have been produced by our committees and spread to the grassroots. Branding cities in the field of gastro-tourism through gastro-economy and Turkish Culinary Arts, establishing structures such as Caravan Tourism and Field Hospitals through multiple partnerships, creating a secure purchasing platform in the second-hand vehicle market, creating a secure real estate purchase and sale platform, and growing selected SMEs in 23 locations in 20 places in line with the 2023 targets to turn them into brands of Türkiye and of the world. This and many other projects like it have been the fruits of MÜSİAD's Renewal journey.
We created the MÜSİAD Brand in 6 fundamental fields in line with Türkiye's 6 fundamental strategies: MÜSİAD INNOVA ( MÜSİAD YENİLİK) in order to adapt to the conditions of innovation management and digital transformation.
MÜSİAD FUTURE (MÜSİAD GELECEK), in order to develop the strategic sectors and business models of the future,
MÜSİAD ACADEMY, in order to turn education into a MÜSİAD school of thought and give it a corporate identity.
2023 YER-EL (20 YER 23 EL), which covers the work directed at our Anatolian companies in order to produce World Brands from Türkiye by increasing branding and the brand values of companies and to turn our SMEs into large-scale corporate brands; MÜSİAD INVEST (MÜSİAD YATIRIM), in order to turn the credibility advantage of the MÜSİAD Brand in Türkiye's investment strategies, its field, and the savings kept under the mattress into mass investments and partnerships and to establish the systematics of investment funds,
MÜSİAD TIA (MÜSİAD TİCARET ve YATIRIM AJANSLARI), which we designed together with the Presidency Investment Office in order to promote Türkiye as an investment and trade market for the direct foreign investor and to operate MÜSİAD's international field presence like a trade and investment system. As many of you have witnessed, we are continuing and will continue our work without interruption. We will go on developing projects and serving our country, our nation and the lands where we were born.
As MÜSİAD, while upholding the ideals of our founders and these goals of ours, we are on the other hand also continuing the MÜSİAD tradition.
Our Qard al-Hasan Fund, one of the finest applications of this tradition, becomes a balm for wounds with the favour of our members and enables us to strengthen the culture of brotherhood and pass it on to new generations.
Our Qard al-Hasan Fund project, which we brought to life with the desire to continue an ancient tradition, has institutionalized the culture of mutual aid and solidarity among our members by turning it into a corporate structure, having created it with the thought of facilitating the trade of our merchants.
On the other hand, we are also continuing the “Zimem Ledger” practice, another of our ancient traditions, with the support and contributions of all our branch members, above all the head office.
Dear Friends,
MÜSİAD is a family, a home, a school. Here we all walk with the pride of being soldiers of the same consciousness and the same cause, and when the time comes we hand the flag over to the brothers who come after us. This rule is ancient for everyone. This is what makes MÜSİAD distinctive. For this reason, being present at the General Assembly of our branch makes me exceedingly happy. As I conclude my words here
I hope that the MÜSİAD Adana General Assembly brings blessings and that our branch's contributions to our business world continue to increase.
I wish success to our branch president, to the board of directors, to the MÜSİAD Women's Committee and to our Young MÜSİAD brothers and sisters. I thank our MÜSİAD Local High Board President Ahmet Bey and our local relations committee, as well as our production and trade high board president Oktay Bey, our professional staff and everyone who has contributed.
I greet you all with respect and affection.
Abdurrahman Kaan
President of MÜSİAD