BRANCH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
20 MARCH 2021
BATMAN
Honourable Governor,
Esteemed Members of the Board of Directors,
Esteemed Presidents and Representatives of the Business and Political World, of the NGOs and of our Chambers,
Esteemed President and Members of our MÜSİAD Batman Branch,my Young MÜSİAD brothers,
Esteemed Members of the Press,
Welcome to the General Assembly of our Batman Branch, you have honoured us with your presence, I respectfully greet you all.
Distinguished Guests,
Despite the difficult conditions of the pandemic, I am pleased to touch Anatolia as far as conditions permit by means of our branch general assemblies and thereby both to hold our general assemblies and to have conversations with you about our country’s economic, commercial and political agenda. What did we say? MÜSİAD is the most effective and most widespread capital platform in the field, one whose like is rarely encountered. With this quality it has penetrated our country’s capillaries both economically and socially and is advancing with the strength that comes from commanding even the finest field knowledge.
Throughout my presidency, I have been constantly on the move, both for my homeland and for our MÜSİAD, within which I have been raised since its foundation and in every stage of which I have served, in order to keep my finger on the pulse of Anatolia at every opportunity, to come together with our members, to touch them, and to listen to sectoral problems directly from those concerned and convey them to the relevant authorities. I can say that the number of days I have spent at the İstanbul Head Office is little beside the time I have spent travelling. I take both pleasure and honour in this. Because MÜSİAD is not a capital group confined to a single region with a narrow sphere of influence. MÜSİAD is the liveliest witness of this country’s social, political and economic history, and indeed one of the elements that built it.
And today we are in Batman. Batman, the city whose name is one with the history of the lands through which the Tigris flows. Geography is destiny, says Ibn Khaldun. The life of a city is in fact the sum of the conditions its geography offers it. While the Batman Stream and the Tigris are the main source of our city, and the other small watercourses have supported the city’s development. Climate and water areas change the direction of the city’s development, and Batman is growing in a planned manner towards the north, the north-west and the east. However, it must also be borne in mind that if this development is not carried out within a certain plan, Batman’s fertile plains fed by the watercourses may be lost because of urban mobility.
In Batman, the migration problem we experience in the other provinces of Türkiye is preventing this city from making use of its own resources in a high value-added manner. The rapid growth that has emerged in the city because of the excessive migration and the distorted agglomeration seen in Batman constitutes a great obstacle to the healthy development of the city. Batman is one of our cities possessing very broad potential, with its natural resources, its strategic position and its location upon trade networks, and its values and its human population. Particularly in a world order in which the logistics lines of the new era are being replanned, Batman has considerable strategic importance.
According to TPAO data, %75 of the crude oil produced in Türkiye is supplied from the wells in Batman, and approximately 27 thousand barrels of oil a day are extracted in the city. It is targeted that 10 thousand people will be employed in 2023 through the factories to be established in Batman following the land allocations.
The Batman Dam, whose construction has been completed, has contributed more than TRY 2 billion to the national economy with the 4.9 billion kilowatt-hours of energy it has produced to date. Batman, which ranked 65th among Türkiye’s largest exporting provinces in 2020, succeeded in raising its exports to USD 35.1 million with an increase of %22.9 in this period when exports were contracting across the country.
These figures are a genuine achievement for a difficult pandemic period. We as MÜSİAD always carry out work aimed at enabling our cities to use their existing potential at the highest level.
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 in order to unite them with a strong trade and investment network.
With every one of our members, we have brought to this point this valuable structure that works more each day in order to be of benefit to the Turkish economy and to the nation with the employment of 2 million people that it provides.
We do this with the strength we draw from our institutional culture, our accumulated knowledge and our organisation.
By processing the information we obtain from domestic and international regions through you, we are creating an important database. And as a result of this, we present to the business world a picture setting out all the risks, the opportunities and the current problems.
Distinguished guests,
We said pandemic! Yes, it is not a process that will pass from today to tomorrow. Experts state that even if the vaccination work is completely finished, social immunity will take time. That is, we have as much road ahead of us again. 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 may say that there is also a calming in our reaction mechanisms. Consequently many rules that we found strange last year have become normal today. And a year from now they will become habits. 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 shall be in a state of alert for quite some time. However, I would like to underline that we are passing through a period in which we must work harder than ever and produce without pause so that this situation does not cause any disruption in our production habits.
When you look at it today, cities that come to the fore with the domestic production and the contribution to GDP that multiply the national income of many states can, as brand values, have even more say in world global production than their own countries do. And believe me, this passes through the concept of self-sufficiency. Discovering the distinctive and strategic values, the resources and the sectors of every city and directing them and putting them to work correctly — this is correct planning. Developing every city through its own distinctive values both ensures the balancing of the population across the country and ensures the sustainability of a total development. That is, determining criteria for valuing one’s own assets by comparing them with world counterparts, and city matching. Our city of Batman is also among our cities most capable of increasing its share in the national income through the model of operating similar resources with far more efficient methods compared with its counterparts in the world.
Distinguished guests,
Of course we have serious problems before us economically. Inflation, the current account deficit, declining reserves, rising exchange rates, rising credit costs, the companies doing business in the various branches of the services sector, above all tourism, which has suffered very great losses because of the pandemic, our companies obliged to roll over credit, the companies caught up in the problem of restructuring and the banking system… We cannot ignore these. However, the approach that the Economic Reform Package announced under the leadership of our Honourable President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan brings to these problems gives us hope.
It particularly makes us happy to see that some of the matters we have been voicing for years have entered this plan. What are these matters?
1. We insistently said that the main element of the fight against inflation is to increase production and to make correct production plans. Because inflation is an economic factor. If you see inflation as a financial parameter, then you try to solve an economic, that is, a real problem with financial instruments. And this brings deadlocks with it. What are these deadlocks? The credit costs that rise as a requirement of the tight monetary policy insisted upon in order to bring down inflation will after a while break the back of the investor and of the producing segment and destroy their enthusiasm for producing.
2. Production is not an element on its own. It must be carried out within a production-trade-investment synchronisation. That is, production intended for sale must be planned appropriately by year and by period and even by city, both in terms of quantity and of product, taking into account both domestic demand and foreign market demand, and investment projects compatible with this must be supported.
3. The inflation problem is in fact the reflection of production costs onto the final product. And in our production costs it is unfortunately imports that lead the way. Reducing imported input, in turn, passes through encouraging domestic and national production in all sectors, both in raw materials and in semi-finished goods. Another matter that makes us happy is that the New Economic Reform package places particular emphasis on this matter, that is, on domestic and national industrialisation. However, seeing that there are product groups on which import decisions are taken quite unnecessarily and which encourage imports, and hearing news of them, believe me, leaves even us puzzled as to what exactly is intended.
4. Ensuring the efficiency of incentives and support, that is, providing incentives to the right projects and the right companies and investments, and putting a stop to waste from an economic point of view, we must establish a system of efficiency and close monitoring in three areas: capital efficiency, incentive efficiency, resource efficiency. If we do not distribute these three items correctly and supervise them closely, then whatever the amount of money in the market may be, it will not turn towards investment.
5. Even if the pandemic ends completely, there are two more great problems awaiting us: climate change and biological terror . Consequently, in this process every country is of necessity making its own contingency plans. In fact countries are now drawing up plans for self-sufficiency, particularly in food, and are accordingly developing techniques for the effective use of agricultural land and pastures. Moreover, the security and the effective management of water resources will be the new field of struggle of the world of the future. Measures will be taken against a possible repetition in every area, from production through to security. In order for us to be able to reflect this advantage onto the field together 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 before us lies a field of opportunity in which we can make a serious leap in the global economy in the long term by using our R&D and innovation capacity and our labour force competences in order to develop them.
Distinguished Guests,
Through the analyses we made especially in line with the information coming from the field, as early as the beginning of 2018 we prepared reports and gave statements describing and explaining the new world order of today and even of the 2023-2025 line. Reading the future begins with understanding today well and simulating tomorrow’s requirements with today’s constraints and resources. Within the framework of our renewal process, as you know, we moved to a project-based system. Freeing ourselves from our unwieldy structure, we moved to a system that is far more effective, faster and from which our members can benefit far more. I believe that the integration in Anatolia, which was disrupted because of the pandemic, will continue from where it left off in the next administration’s term. Committees will be established in each of our cities in a manner suited to its own resources and sectoral diversity, and your new projects will be evaluated within a much closer working traffic with the Centre.
The subjects we thought of 2 years ago and determined as committee names have today become the strategic concepts and subjects of the future. Praise be to God, by foreseeing these we have achieved yet another first as the capital platform most compatible with the Presidential System of Government and with the new world order. And this is what befits us.
Let me give a few examples:
We said the Committee for New Routes and Approaches in Logistics. Look, now logistics companies and the new routes they draw are giving direction to world trade. We said the Domestic and National Production Planning Committee; look, now the fundamental starting point of unitary economic structures has become domestic and national production planning. We said the Energy and Mining Management and Investments committee; today an entirely different area of economic sharing is emerging in the name of energy security and new mineral deposits. We said the Industrial Zones and Campuses committee; look, today establishing production bases has become an essential field of investment throughout the world. We said the smart cities and city economies committee; after us it became a policy at Presidential 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 how far-sighted we were on this matter. When we used the word gastro-economy, in our country it was still being carried out as limited work in the charge of a very rare and restricted circle. Today it has become the fundamental starting point of tourism and of national development almost everywhere. Likewise we said new resources and investments in tourism; tourism has moved beyond purely summer tourism and turned towards entirely different fields.
My dear friends,
We are courageous people who manage to produce and to work under all conditions. In 2020, an economically difficult year, we held one of Türkiye’s most important fairs.
We held with broad participation and successfully completed MÜSİAD EXPO 2020, the largest fair held after the pandemic, which drew intense interest from both exhibitors and visitors.
Nearly 15 thousand visitors from 102 countries, above all from Europe, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Africa and the MENA countries, attended the fair, which lasted 4 days.
Already our 23 committees in total under the roof of the MÜSİAD ASSEMBLY have begun to integrate with each of our cities in Anatolia and have begun to gather potential investors and industrialists around certain projects.
These projects have begun to encourage the capital power in Anatolia to invest in projects or to become partners in them.
Allow me to present a few important examples:
For example, with our Investment and Production Bases Project we have created a model that, by building living and production zones in which all their needs will be met in the same environment for our small-scale companies which have difficulty producing in narrow spaces and therefore cannot reach scale, will in time turn them into institutionalised companies ready to move to organised industrial zones. We have completed the first prototype of this model, and we shall soon begin the construction of the second as well..
In order to enter among the world’s top ten economies, and for the epidemics and disasters likely to recur under any circumstances, we are obliged to establish production bases. By establishing production bases, it becomes possible to protect companies, employees and production in situations of epidemic or severe disaster and to continue without a full shutdown.
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 space both for our workers and for our producers and their families. This project of ours has also been one of the works planned from 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 (SBB) within the scope of the Coordination Council for the Improvement of the Investment Environment.
Likewise, with our Smart Agricultural Cities Project we have launched an initiative in order to encourage rural development and in this way to support reverse migration and to attain a homogeneous population structure.
We presented this as a model to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
With the Smart Agricultural Cities Model we have developed an initiative to encourage rural life and to support rural development, with opportunities targeting the population crammed into the big cities and especially the enterprises of women and young people.
Today many of our members in Anatolia are carrying out preparatory work in order to implement this initiative in their own regions.
Many more projects such as these have been produced by our committees and have 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 buying and selling platform; growing selected SMEs in 20 places and 23 locations in line with the 2023 targets and turning them into Türkiye and World Brands. This and many other such projects have been the fruits of MÜSİAD’s renewal adventure.
As MÜSİAD, while upholding the ideals of our founders and these targets of ours, on the other hand we are also continuing the MÜSİAD tradition.
Our Qard al-Hasan Fund, one of the finest applications of this tradition, is a balm to wounds through the favour of our members, and enables us to strengthen the culture of brotherhood and pass it on to new generations.
On the other hand, we are also continuing the practice of the “Zimem Ledger”, another of our venerable traditions, with the support and the contributions of all our branch members, foremost among them 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 venerable for everyone. This is what makes MÜSİAD distinctive. For this purpose, being present at the General Assembly of our branch makes me exceedingly happy. As I conclude my words here, I hope that the MÜSİAD Batman General Assembly will bring good things and that our branch’s contributions to our business world will 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. I thank our MÜSİAD Local High Board President Ahmet Bey and our local relations committee, and also 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