MANİSA BRANCH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 16 MARCH 2021

Honourable Governor,

Honourable District Governor,

My 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 Manisa Branch, my Young MÜSİAD brothers and sisters,

Esteemed Members of the Press,

Welcome to the General Assembly of our Manisa Branch, you have honoured us with your presence; I respectfully greet you all.

Distinguished Guests,

We have left 2020 behind as a difficult year for the whole world. Especially from the beginning of 2018 onwards, we were insistently emphasizing that the global economic system had become greatly constrained and that we might find ourselves having to face a serious commodity crisis.

Yet the point at which this expected crisis erupted came from a place no one could have predicted: the Global Pandemic. Unlike the others, this crisis did not have an economic ground, but in terms of its effects it made us question the economic system, which came to a standstill all over the world.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, while the global economy entered a great shock on both the supply and the demand side, the movement of capital, goods and people came almost to a standstill and in many sectors it became impossible to survive. 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, what confronted us was a statist capitalism, and this model was in fact not at all unfamiliar to us. For in a logic in which national economies are taken as the basis, the state was going to make its regulatory role and weight over the economy felt more and more — and so it is happening. At the beginning of the pandemic almost every state announced support and incentive packages so that its own nation would be affected with the least damage from the outbreak. As long as the pandemic continues and until it ends completely all over the world, these practices must maintain their existence in a graduated manner. Perhaps this is also the new economic model within which the business world will move.

Today, in our country and in many countries of the world, the state’s fields of intervention are steadily widening on account of income injustice, of capital lost in the middle-income trap and of rising prices of goods and services. Despite this, it is also possible to say that the world’s global capital is once again flowing from the developed countries towards developing countries such as ours. Yet the important point here is not that this flow of capital comes and goes with the logic of momentary fund movements, but that it provides production, investment and employment to our country through direct investments. And realizing this is once again in our hands.

Distinguished guests,

As the conjuncture requires, our state organs have of course been obliged, and will be obliged, to adopt certain temporary policies. The important point here is not to hold back from supporting our state in the process we are going through. We are obtaining the first-period outputs of the steps taken in order to prevent the excessive depreciation of the Turkish lira and the course of high inflation — for example, of the adjustment in credit costs.

As I have expressed in various statements and indeed at the meeting we held with the team of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT), if cyclical adjustments are of course obligatory, we respect the decision our state takes on this matter. Yet we voice our red line, particularly on the matter of interest rates, at every opportunity. Likewise, for us a lasting and sustainable price level and growth trend can come about only through a planned production policy and the synchronization of production, trade and investment.

Esteemed Guests,

As you know, last week the Economic Reform Package was announced by our esteemed President. It makes us happy to see in particular that domestic and national industrialization policies are given priority, and the actions indicating that price stability will be ensured through production.

At the new table of economic sharing that will be opened in the post-pandemic period, our domestic and national capital and industrialization policies are the sole axis that will carry us to the 2023 and post-2023 targets. The pandemic has in fact greatly increased Türkiye’s importance on the world economic atlas. This opportunity must be made use of immediately and in the most effective way.

Commercial protectionism stands as the new criterion of the new era. Countries such as Russia and Argentina raising taxes on certain food products or imposing export bans, or the recourse to more than 46 commercial protectionist practices in wheat and rice around the world last year, lay bare the gravity of the situation. For this reason we think that an all-out struggle is essential against all products that threaten price stability, above all agricultural and food products.

At this point, the reforms aimed at bringing produce left in the fields and wholesale markets together with buyers in a special section to be opened on the Digital Agriculture Market (DİTAP), at creating a cold chain in order to reduce losses of vegetables and fruit, and at expanding the Food Banking System in order to prevent food waste have been gratifying. In addition, developing contract farming mechanisms that will increase the confidence of the farmer and the industrialist in written agreements — in order to contribute to agricultural production planning, to increase predictability in production and to prevent price fluctuations — will also reduce the pressure on food prices.

Although the economic damage we sustained during the pandemic period is evident, in this period the Turkish economy became the country that recorded the highest growth among the G20 countries after China. Growing by %1.8 over 2020 as a whole, the Turkish economy displayed a performance that surprised all the international institutions which 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. Yet here again the determining factor is the course of the pandemic and the efficiency of the vaccination efforts. For should we face a third wave, in order to compensate for the possible capital loss we would experience once more, we must — exactly as China has done — continue production without pause in certain regions and move to increase our stocks.

And this of course passes through the logic of establishing safe production bases whose every stage has been thought through. In this model, whose details I will touch upon shortly, our fundamental aim is to develop the strategy China has pursued under the conditions of our country, with even more advanced conditions and with a logic that puts the human being and nature first.

Increasing the self-sufficiency policies of all our sectors that hold a critical position in domestic and national production and, in particular, determining a new strategy for foreign trade will be a correct step.

Esteemed guests,

The COVID 19 process is not one that will end overnight. Experts state that even if the vaccination efforts are completely finished, social immunity will take time. In other words, we have as much road again ahead of us. 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 is also a settling in our reaction mechanisms. Consequently, many rules that we found strange last year have become normalized today. A year from now they will have become habit. Eating and drinking habits, shopping habits, the new models tested in working systems and the advantages they bring, and so on. It is also certain that we will remain in a state of precaution for quite some time.

Moreover, even if the COVID process ends completely, there are two more great problems awaiting us: climate change and biological terror or armament. Consequently, in this process every country is of necessity making its own contingency plans. In every field, from production through to security, measures will be taken against a possible recurrence. In order to be able to reflect that 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 lies before us a field of opportunity in which, by using our R&D and innovation capacity to develop our labour force competencies, we can make a serious leap in the global economy in the long run.

We think that we have a serious advantage particularly in terms of geographical position, and that this will create a great field of opportunity for our country in the future projections of the global economy. In a process in which supply chains are being redesigned and logistics lines are being redrawn, Türkiye, the country where the roads intersect, must take its place in the game as a far more active player.

Look, it is no coincidence: read once more now the names of the committees in our renewal process, which we launched two years ago by analysing these days very well and by drawing up a genuinely strategic road map. You will see how the line drawn in 2018 designed a path running all the way to 2023-2030. We put forward this vision years ago, before anyone else saw it.

We said the Committee on New Routes and Approaches in Logistics. Look, world trade is now being directed by logistics firms and the new routes they draw. We said the Committee on Domestic and National Production Planning; look, domestic and national production planning has now become the fundamental starting point of unitary economic structures. We said the Committee on Energy and Mining Management and Investments; today an entirely different field of economic sharing is taking shape 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 level of the Presidency and was written into the 11th Development Plan. Indeed, the projects launched across the EU for the twinning of cities showed how right and how far-sighted we were on this matter. There are many more examples: Gastro-economy, Rural development, Mergers and acquisitions, Export Matching… Look, these strategies, which for a time we had difficulty understanding and for which we even criticized those who conceived and built them, have today become the world’s new turning points. So it seems that one must first listen impartially, then respect and try to understand. In the end, the new world order is built upon the young, and we carried out this renewal with a staff that is fresh in terms of age.

Esteemed Guests,

Our faith in our country and in our country’s potential is complete, esteemed friends. Praise be to God, during the pandemic too we did everything that was said to be impossible.

In 2020, a year that passed with economic difficulty, we held one of Türkiye’s most important fairs.

We held MÜSİAD EXPO 2020 — the largest fair held after the pandemic, which drew intense interest from both exhibitors and visitors — with wide participation and completed it successfully.

Close to 15 thousand visitors from 102 countries, chiefly from Europe, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Africa and the MENA countries, attended the four-day fair.

At the fair we held under 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 the investment opportunities in our country at close hand.

Distinguished Guests,

Besides being industrially developed and rich in mining, Manisa, with its large industrial zone, hosts factories and production facilities in a great many different sectors.

The exports of Manisa, which ranked 8th among Türkiye’s largest exporting provinces in 2020, displayed a strong performance at USD 4.2 billion despite recording a decrease of %6.0 compared with the previous year.

Electrical and Electronic products, which rank first in the province’s exports with a share of %50, are increasing their importance for the Manisa economy day by day. Electrical and Electronic exports were followed by the Air Conditioning Industry and Automotive Industry groups. In this period the city exported goods and services to a total of 178 countries, and the first three places were taken by the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Esteemed Friends, we as MÜSİAD support our fellow travellers with 89 points in Türkiye and 225 contact points in 95 countries around the world. And now we are launching an entirely new restructuring movement in order to unite them with a strong trade and investment network.

We, with each one of our members, have brought to this point this valuable structure, which works harder every day in order to be of benefit to the Turkish economy and its nation, with the employment it provides for 2 million people.

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 building 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.

Distinguished Guests,

As you know, in order to prepare in advance for the new world system, we launched our renewal process. Our motto at the outset was “together”.

We have fulfilled almost all the initiatives we planned and promised within the framework of our renewal process. Now we are gathering 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. To this end, our 23 committees in total under the roof of the MÜSİAD ASSEMBLY, which we established during the renewal process, have begun, with projects suited to their own thematic or sectoral fields, to gather the potential investors and industrialists in Anatolia around specific projects. These projects have begun to encourage the capital power in Anatolia to invest in projects or to become partners in them.

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 firms that struggle to produce in narrow spaces and therefore cannot reach economies of scale, will in time turn them into institutionalized firms ready to move to organized industrial zones. We have completed the first prototype of this model, and we will soon begin the construction of the second as well..

In order to enter among the world’s top ten economies, and in any case for the pandemics and disasters that are likely to recur, we must establish production bases. By establishing production bases, it becomes possible to protect firms, employees and production in cases of pandemic or severe disaster and to keep them going without a full lockdown.

We have given this model the short name SME INCUBATION CENTRES. This model, in which all the needs of SMEs — from education to accommodation, from social activities to artistic settings — 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 those 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 within the scope of the Coordination Council for the Improvement of the Investment Environment.

Likewise, with our Smart Agricultural Cities Project we launched an initiative to encourage rural development and thereby 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, and with its opportunities targeting the population crowded into the big cities and especially women’s and young people’s enterprises, we developed an initiative to encourage rural life and to support rural development.

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 property 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 project and many others like it have become the fruits of MÜSİAD’s renewal adventure.

As MÜSİAD, while we uphold the ideals of our founders and these targets of ours, we are on the other hand also continuing the MÜSİAD tradition.

Our MÜSİAD Qard al-Hasan Fund, one of the finest practices of this tradition, is a balm for wounds thanks to the favour of our members, and enables us to strengthen the culture of brotherhood and pass it on to new generations.

Our MÜSİAD Qard al-Hasan Fund project, which we brought to life out of the desire to continue an ancient tradition, by transforming the culture of mutual aid and solidarity among our members into an institutional structure, which we created with the thought of facilitating the trade of our merchants, has institutionalized the culture of mutual aid and solidarity. 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, foremost the head office.

Esteemed Friends,

MÜSİAD is a family, a home, a school. Here we all walk with the pride that comes from the same consciousness and from being soldiers of the same cause, and when the time comes we hand the flag to our brothers who come after us. This rule is ancient for everyone. This is what makes MÜSİAD unique. For this reason, being present at the General Assembly of our branch makes me exceedingly happy. As I conclude my words here, I wish that the MÜSİAD Manisa General Assembly may bring good things and that our branch’s contributions to our business world may continue and increase. I thank our Branch President Reşit Bey, who is handing over his duty, and his board of directors. I wish success to Abdurrahman Bey, who will take over the duty, and to his board. 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