MÜSİAD AKSARAY GENERAL ASSEMBLY

MÜSİAD AKSARAY GENERAL ASSEMBLY

3 August 2021

Honourable Members of Parliament,

Honourable Mayor,

Honourable President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry,

Esteemed Presidents and Representatives of the Aksaray Business World, of the Political Parties, of the Chambers, Commodity Exchanges and NGOs,

Esteemed Members of Our Board of Directors,

Branch Presidents Who Have Come from the Neighbouring Provinces, (Konya, Kırşehir)

Esteemed President and Members of Our Aksaray Branch,

Members of the MÜSİAD Women's Committee, My Brothers and Sisters of Young MÜSİAD,

Esteemed Members of the Press,

I respectfully greet you all at the General Assembly of our Branch; welcome.

Distinguished Guests,

From the day the measures and restrictions made necessary by the pandemic were largely lifted, we began to come together with you, our esteemed friends, and to hold our meetings face to face.

We make use of every opportunity in order to be informed about every corner of our country; we tour our country inch by inch. Adding to the visits we carry out in order to reach more people, last week we visited 7 of our provinces in 7 days, and today we are continuing with Aksaray.

In Aksaray, whose socio-economic structure is based on agriculture and livestock breeding, %70 of the active population earns its living from agriculture and livestock breeding.

In this respect, it is seen that in order to lighten the weight of agriculture in the provincial economy, it is essential to develop the industrial and services sectors.

Indeed, the possible development of the provincial economy will be possible by increasing the investment and production relating to the industrial sector, which currently makes up only %7 of employment.

The reaching of full capacity by the facilities operating in particular in the Organized Industrial Zone is of importance in terms of increasing production and employment in the industrial sector.

In this way, export potential will emerge in many additional sectors in the region, as in the automotive, automotive supplier industry, agricultural implements and machinery, and plastics industries.

In 2020, a year in which exports declined across the country, Aksaray, whose export volume contracted by 5.9 percent compared to the previous year to stand at USD 110 million, managed to give a foreign trade surplus by making USD 40 million of imports in the same period.

The Machinery and Parts sector, which covers 51 percent of the province's exports, and Steel exports, which come second with a %12 share, are quite important in revealing Aksaray's potential in the manufacturing sector.

The 64.0 percent increase in exports in the first 6 months of 2021 compared to the same period of the previous year has been a gratifying development for the Aksaray economy. We believe that as the recoveries observed in production, employment and exports accelerate, Aksaray's real economic potential will come to light.

In order for the city to increase its share in the national economy, we must do our very best with new investments and by making maximum use of the existing potential.

We, as MÜSİAD, are always ready to put our shoulder to the wheel at this point.

Distinguished Guests, My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The pandemic, which has been going on for more than a year, is forcing all countries into a great effort in order to enter a process of recovery.

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

Therefore, we now have 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 in the right way, channelled to the right places, and that investors are reached and guided. In addition to this, of course, it is also essential that the distinctive values of every 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 investment environments and that establishes the system which will bring investors together with companies in Türkiye.

We express this at every opportunity: “in the future it will not be states but cities that compete”. For this reason, the creation of regional economies and city economies is essential. In this way 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 transformation of their existing assets into value, that is, the identification of their potential and the increase of the provinces' value through investments suited to that potential, is an extremely important matter.

In our travels, in which we tour every corner of Türkiye, we obtain a certain body of data. With this 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. We named this work “Developing and Branding Cities with Their Distinctive Values”.

Determining a correct industrialization policy comes through finding, supporting, scaling up and increasing the capital strength of the promising companies that will keep this economy on its feet in order to create city economies, and, with a domestic and national production drive, both branding the cities and strengthening the companies. I call this putting city economies to work for the execution of industrialization.

In this context, the brand province we have determined for Aksaray has been Nuremberg, which is accepted as Germany's industrial capital.

Nuremberg, with a size of USD 30.9 billion, is referred to as Germany's “industrial heart” because the headquarters of companies such as Siemens and MAN are located there. Nuremberg, which is a touristic centre of attraction with its historical settlements and buildings and where income per capita stands above 50 thousand dollars, is a central city.

We believe that Aksaray too, with a size of USD 2.7 billion and income per capita close to 7 thousand dollars, amply possesses this potential.

Distinguished Guests,

We in fact also see our project for the Development of City Economies as a road map for Türkiye's determination of a new investment policy.

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

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

The primary duty that falls to us must first of all be a change of mindset. That is, to approach investment not merely as inviting companies in certain countries 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, a kind of matching.

The MÜSİAD TIA (MÜSİAD TRADE and INVESTMENT AGENCIES) system, which we designed together with the Presidency Investment Office in order to present 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, will serve this purpose, and in this way it will both put investment diplomacy into operation and attract to our country the active investment diaspora abroad.

Esteemed Friends,

In order to prepare in advance for the new world system, as MÜSİAD we launched our process of renewal and determined our starting motto as “together”.

And to the next term we leave the word “WE ARE HERE”.

We say “we are here” at all times for Türkiye, in production, in trade, in investment, in every field of society from art to culture, in solidarity, and for the development and prosperity of our country.

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 compatible with their own thematic or sectoral fields.

These projects have begun to encourage the capital power in Anatolia to invest in projects or to become a partner in them.

For example, with our Investment and Production Bases Project we have created a model that builds, for our small-scale companies which have difficulty producing in narrow spaces and which therefore cannot reach scale, living and production zones where all their needs will be met in the same environment, and that will in time turn them into institutionalized companies 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 to encourage rural development and in this way to support reverse migration and to attain a homogeneous population structure. We presented this to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as a model.

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

God willing, through this integration process in the branches, you will be instrumental in carrying our MÜSİAD much further forward.

Distinguished Guests, Esteemed Friends,

With the powerful tremor created by the pandemic, 2020 was a difficult year all over the world in economic, social and communal terms.

Türkiye experienced the first shock of this tremor and then drew a successful recovery curve.

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 would like to touch on a point that I consider important:

As Türkiye, we must certainly eliminate at the earliest possible time the two fundamental factors that force inflationary pressure.

The first is to be self-sufficient. That is, to carry out domestically as well the production of the nearly USD 175 billion worth of intermediate goods 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 in which they can put to use the foreign currency and gold they hold and their money in interest or profit-share accounts.

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

We can evaluate this %7 growth in the first quarter as the harbinger 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, we must achieve investment–production–trade synchronization and set out production as the fundamental economic policy.

The inflationary environment we are currently in and the high credit costs show that we are still a risky investment area.

Esteemed Guests, My MÜSİAD Brothers and Sisters,

In a short while I will hand over the duty of the Presidency of MÜSİAD.

Throughout my term of office, I strove to be a president who kept his finger on the pulse of the business world and of the field.

Contact with our members, consultation and fellowship with them, the constant hosting of the branches in Anatolia at the Head Office and thereby raising the closeness between the centre and the FIELD to the highest level have been my basic goal.

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

On this occasion, I ask you to forgive me for any right of yours I may not have observed.

Before completing my speech with these feelings, I wish ease above all to our nation, to the teams on duty and to the state officials who are fighting the fires that have broken out at more than one point in our country.

May my Lord grant that these fires, which burn our hearts, come to an end as soon as possible. As MÜSİAD, from the first day we have been reaching the regions damaged by the fires and supporting the people of the region through our branches. Until these difficult days are overcome, we will always be ready to do whatever we can.

Distinguished Guests,

I wish that our branch's general assembly may be a means of goodness, and I thank our branch president Eyüp dağdaş and his board, who are handing over the duty. I wish success to our Aksaray branch president who will take over the duty and to the board of directors.

I pray to Almighty God that our branch continues to increase, through its work, the contributions it offers to the business world and to our country.

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

Abdurrahman KAAN

President of MÜSİAD