MÜSİAD MERSİN GENERAL ASSEMBLY

7 July 2021

Honourable Governor,

Honourable Member of Parliament,

Honourable Mayor of Toroslar,

Honourable Chief of Police,

Honourable Mufti,

Esteemed Presidents and Representatives of the Mersin Business World, of the Organized Industrial Zone, of the Chambers, the Commodity Exchange and the NGOs,

Esteemed Members of our MÜSİAD Board of Directors,

Our Branch Presidents who have come from the surrounding provinces,

Former Presidents of our Mersin Branch,

Esteemed President and Members of our Mersin Branch,

Members of the MÜSİAD Women’s Committee, My Young MÜSİAD Brothers

Esteemed Members of our Press,

With the happiness of coming together with you on the occasion of the general assembly of our Mersin Branch, I respectfully greet you all; welcome.

Distinguished Guests,

While struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic, we tried on the other hand to adapt to the new habits it brought into our lives.

For example, because of the restrictions and the measures we were unable to come together with you for a long time, we could not converse face to face, and we had to hold our meetings online.

With normalization, praise be to God, we are holding our general assemblies together with you, our esteemed friends, and making up for the longing.

In order to touch more people by setting foot in every corner of our homeland, and for the general assemblies, we visited many of our cities over the past two weeks. We went to 9 provinces. On Friday and Saturday we were in Northern Cyprus. Yesterday we were in Alanya; and today we are in Mersin, the beautiful port city of the Mediterranean.

Mersin, one of Türkiye’s provinces that are developed in every respect, draws attention with its fertile soil, its developed industry, its rich mines, its port and its oil refinery.

While % 40 of the total gross income in the province is obtained from industry, %30 from agriculture and %10 from the trade sector, the majority of the active population works in the agricultural sector and the share of land under cultivation is around %25.

Mersin, which comes to the fore in industrial products particularly with cotton, became our country’s 13th largest exporting city in 2020 with exports at the level of USD 2.0 billion.

Mersin, which succeeded in increasing its total exports by %12.9 in this period when the foreign trade volume contracted across the country, managed to reflect its successful performance in the agricultural sector in foreign trade as well and drew attention with its exports of Fresh Fruit and Vegetables and of Cereals and Pulses.

Mersin’s positive performance in exports continues in 2021 as well. In the January-June period of the year, Mersin’s exports, which recorded an increase of approximately %25.0 compared with the same period of the previous year, have already reached the level of USD 1.2 billion.

Of course, while speaking of Mersin’s successful foreign trade performance, we need to open a special parenthesis for the Port of Mersin.

The Port of Mersin, which is counted among the top 100 ports in the world, also has geostrategic importance in that it is our country’s gateway opening onto the Eastern Mediterranean.

Almost all the sectors that bring vitality to the city economy, agriculture first and foremost, have a connection with maritime transport, and the Port of Mersin is the locomotive of the provincial economy.

We believe that the Port of Mersin, the foundation of whose expansion project was laid recently, will go beyond the provincial borders and continue to contribute to the development of both the region and the country.

Dear Friends,

In the past weeks we came together with the economy editors of our press in order to explain our country’s investment strategies suited to the new world order and our project of developing and branding cities with their distinctive values. Our project met with a fine response both from members of the press and from the public.

As you know, Türkiye has in recent years been going through a period in which it has had partial difficulty, especially in the matter of direct foreign investments. In line with the commercial and economic activity that opened up after the pandemic, investments shifted towards developing countries. The developed countries could not take the share they wanted from this pie.

As for our country, despite being in the upper ranks in the class of developing countries and having favourable conditions in terms of investment, it could not attract the direct foreign investment it wanted.

Foreign investments made in Türkiye recorded a decline compared with 2019 and, at the point they have reached, stood at USD 6.8 billion in 2020. And in the last months of this year we unfortunately see that investors’ interest in our country is decreasing.

Distinguished Guests, My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

For more than a year the pandemic process has upset the received wisdom of almost every country in the world in the fields of the economy, of trade and even of social life. Vaccination rates are gradually increasing; countries are striving to be able to enter a process of recovery.

But now we can clearly see this: even if the disease-related effects of the pandemic come to an end, the world is now on the threshold of implementing a new economic order and brand-new rules.

Therefore we are now obliged to follow the new models of development and growth, that is, the new business development models of the new world order.

For this it is necessary to ensure that investments are attracted correctly, that they are channelled to the right places, and that investors are reached and guided. Alongside this, of course, it is also essential that the values particular to each city of our country be explained far better. And this is possible only with a new investment network that is spread all over the world, that draws investment, production and trade information from every point, that knows the investment environments and that establishes the system to bring investors together with the firms in Türkiye.

We express this at every opportunity: “in the future it is not states but cities that will compete”. For this reason it is essential to create regional economies and city economies. Thus we will have cities that are self-sufficient and that have been able to turn their own assets into value.

The branding of cities and the turning of their existing assets into value — that is, identifying their potentials and increasing the value of the provinces through investments suited to these potentials — is an extremely important matter.

We obtain a number of data on our travels in which we tour every point of Türkiye. With these data and with the experience that comes from being in direct contact with you, we created a project, and matching cities became the basic starting point of this project of ours. We gave this study the name “Developing and Branding Cities with Their Distinctive Values”.

Determining a correct industrialization policy passes through finding, supporting and scaling up the promising firms that will keep this economy standing in order to create city economies, increasing their capital strength, and, with the domestic and national production drive, both branding the cities and strengthening the firms. I call this operating city economies for the execution of industrialization.

When we look at our province of Mersin, its GDP is USD 14.1 billion, while the brand province we have determined for Mersin is the Swedish city of Stockholm, which, besides being a leader in industry and in the economic field first and foremost, comes to the fore in the metal and machinery manufacturing, paper and printing, foodstuffs and chemicals sectors.

The GDP of Stockholm, which is Sweden’s wholesale and retail base, is USD 137.8 billion. Similar to the Port of Mersin, the Port of Stockholm is of vital importance to the Swedish economy and has the distinction of being the country’s second largest port.

In order to grow to the level of Stockholm, which is one of Europe’s top 10 cities by income per capita, is possible only through determining the city’s distinctive values together with every section of the local administrations, bringing those values together with suitable investments and investors, continuously monitoring the efficiency of support and incentives, and the branding of that city.

Mersin, a special city that stands out in the Mediterranean with many of its features, has this potential.

Distinguished Guests,

We also see our project for the development of city economies as a road map in Türkiye’s process of determining a new investment policy.

The only capital organization that can support the realization in Türkiye of these works, which appear difficult but which can be brought to life with sound organization and hard work, is MÜSİAD.

Because the organization that can most effectively conduct the commercial-economic diplomacy and the investment diplomacy between the world and Türkiye — being one that understands the language of both the industrialist and the SME, that develops projects, that is more dynamic with its renewed structure and widespread with its presence — is again MÜSİAD.

The primary duty falling to us must first of all be a change of mentality. That is, to handle investment not merely as inviting companies in certain countries to come here as partners, but as presenting Türkiye as an investment market. And it must be to grow soundly the SME elements that are the locomotive of domestic production and, with the advantages of economies of scale, to bring them together with foreign partners and fund owners, that is, to match them in a sense.

The MÜSİAD TIA (MÜSİAD TRADE and INVESTMENT AGENCIES) system, which we designed together with the Presidential Investment Office in order to promote Türkiye as an investment and trade market for the direct foreign investor and to operate MÜSİAD’s foreign field presence like a trade and investment system, will serve this purpose and will thereby both set investment diplomacy in motion and draw the active investment diaspora abroad to our country.

Dear Friends,

As MÜSİAD, we launched our renewal process in order to prepare in advance for the new world system, and we set out with the motto “together”.

With the peace of mind of having kept the promises I gave you when I first took office and of having fulfilled worthily this sacred duty I received, we leave to the next term the word WE ARE HERE.

For Türkiye we always say “we are here” — in production, in trade, in investment, in every field of society from art to culture, in mutual aid, for the development and welfare of our country.

MÜSİAD, particularly after the renewal process, is taking its place among the world’s leading organizations by ordering its own structure in the face of the new world order and by developing a distinctive management-organization model.

I and my team-mates fought for this throughout our term in order to reach something better, and we have no doubt that the brothers who come after us will take over this cause and this relay race in the same consciousness and with the same watchword and carry it on.

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.

Our committees have begun to gather the potential investors and industrialists in Anatolia around certain projects, with projects suited to their own thematic or sectoral fields. Last week we laid the foundation of a housing project in Balıkesir with the partnership of our members; yesterday in Alanya we laid the foundation of the first and only avocado and subtropical products processing plant in Türkiye, belonging to Almey Global A.Ş., in which 20 of our members are again partners. And the week before. In Samsun we held the opening of a sports school. God willing, in September we will hold the opening of the Frozen Çağ döner kebab facility in Erzurum, in which 18 of our members are partners and whose foundation we laid last year.

These projects have begun to encourage the capital strength 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 will, by building living and production zones where all their needs are met in the same environment for our small-scale firms which have difficulty producing in narrow spaces and which for this reason cannot reach scale, turn them in time into institutionalized firms ready to move to organized industrial zones. We have completed the first prototype of this model, and the construction of the second will also begin soon.

On the other hand, with our Smart Agricultural Cities Project we have launched an initiative in order to encourage rural development and thereby support reverse migration and attain a homogeneous population structure. We presented this as a model to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

Many more projects like these have been produced by our committees and spread to the grassroots.

I believe that you, with this process of integration in the branches, will be instrumental in carrying our MÜSİAD much further forward, God willing.

Distinguished Guests, Dear Friends,

In 2020 the main agenda of the whole world was the pandemic and the difficult conditions it brought. All countries experienced a deep tremor in economic and social terms.

Of course Türkiye too had its share of this tremor; but unlike many countries, it drew a successful recovery curve after the first shock.

We recovered slowly and this was reflected in our capacity utilization rates. Our manufacturing industry, for its part, settled into a notable course of development in the last two quarters.

Here I want to underline one matter in particular:

As Türkiye we must without fail eliminate at the earliest possible time the two basic factors that force inflationary pressure.

The first is to be self-sufficient. That is, to carry out domestically as well the production of the intermediate goods worth close to USD 175 billion that are imported, to minimize external dependency and, of course, to give up seeing money as a commodity instrument.

The second is to provide resident savers with new and reliable investment opportunities where they can make use of the foreign currency, the gold and the money they hold in interest or in profit-share accounts.

Establishing venture capital funds in which projects will be securitized, and encouraging production in Türkiye by reinforcing the culture of partnership through these funds, must likewise be a matter with which we must certainly concern ourselves.

We can evaluate this growth of %7 in the first quarter as the herald of the exit from the pandemic. Indeed, with the base effect we may even see the growth rate in the second quarter above %15.

However, for this situation to be sustainable passes through achieving the investment-production-trade synchronization and setting out production as the basic economic policy.

When the inflationary environment we are currently in and the high cost of credit are taken into consideration, Türkiye still appears as a risky investment area .

Distinguished Guests, My MÜSİAD Brothers

In a short while I shall hand over my duty as President of MÜSİAD. To have not disappointed your trust during this 4-year period and to have fulfilled the duties falling to me is my greatest wish.

Throughout my term of office I strove to be a president who did not sit at the Head Office but travelled, taking the pulse of the business world and of the field.

Contact with our members, consultation and conversation with them, the constant hosting of the Anatolian branches at the Head Office and thus raising to the highest level the closeness between the centre and the FIELD, was my basic goal.

We express it at every opportunity: MÜSİAD is a school, a home. And we are marathon runners. I believe that our friends who will take over the duty and continue this marathon will show every effort to carry our MÜSİAD much further forward than we did.

On this occasion I ask you to make your rights lawful to me and to grant me your forgiveness.

As I complete my speech with these feelings, I wish that our branch’s general assembly may be instrumental in good things, and I wish success to our Mersin branch president and to the board of directors.

I pray to Almighty God that our branch’s contributions, through its work, to the Mersin business world, to its region and to our country may continue increasingly.

I thank everyone who contributed to this organization and greet you with respect and affection. May God protect you.

Abdurrahman KAAN

President of MÜSİAD

Abdurrahman Kaan

President of MÜSİAD