MÜSİAD ARTVİN OPENING PROGRAM

27 July 2021

Honourable Chief Advisor to the President,

Honourable Member of Parliament,

Honourable Rector,

Honourable President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry,

Esteemed Members of the MÜSİAD Board of Directors,

Esteemed Representatives of the Artvin Business World, of the Political Parties, of the Chambers and of the NGOs,

Our Branch Presidents who have come from the neighbouring provinces,

Esteemed Members of the Press,

Here in Artvin, where we have come together on the occasion of the opening of our branch, I respectfully greet you all; welcome, you have honoured us with your presence.

Distinguished Guests, Esteemed Friends,

2020 was a year in which the pandemic was the main item on the agenda all over the world. Many countries were shaken economically and socially. Türkiye, of course, received its share of this tremor; yet after the initial shock it drew a successful recovery curve. We are continuing the recovery process successfully.

As in every difficult period, in this process too we, as businesspeople, must focus on new investments and on increasing our trade potential.

We believe that our organizational network, which we have expanded with great care as MÜSİAD, and our branches and representative offices have a great share in reaching this goal thanks to the strong trade network and commercial relations they have established in their regions.

I hope that the branch we are opening here today will likewise engage in productive work that contributes to its region and to our country, and I pray that it brings good to our country.

On our travels across 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 the matching of cities became the fundamental starting point of this project of ours.

We named this study “Developing and Branding Cities with Their Distinctive Values”.

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

Artvin's GDP is USD 1.4 billion; %80 of the province's population is engaged in agriculture, but %30 of the provincial economy comes from the agricultural sector. Its wealth lies in forests, and the remaining part is made up of the mining sector. The brand province we have determined for Artvin is Sion, one of Switzerland's leading cities. Sion, which has a size of USD 15.6 billion, is a pioneering city in the tourism sector with its historical monuments and museums and with nature tourism, while it is also in a region that has Switzerland's largest dams and possesses valuable agricultural land and vineyards.

Artvin's reaching the level of Sion is possible through determining the city's distinctive values together with every segment of local government, bringing those values together with suitable investments and investors, continuously monitoring the efficiency of support and incentives, and branding that city.

With its natural beauty and its historical and touristic wealth, Artvin possesses this potential.

Esteemed Friends,

In a short while I will hand over my duty as President of MÜSİAD. My greatest wish is not to have betrayed the trust of you, our esteemed members and friends.

Throughout my term of office I worked to keep my finger on the pulse of the business world and of the field.

Contact with our members, consultation and fellowship with them, the frequent hosting of the Anatolian branches at the Head Office and thereby raising the closeness between the centre and THE FIELD to the highest level were my fundamental goal.

I believe that our friends who will take over the duty and continue this marathon will show every effort to carry our MÜSİAD far beyond where we have brought it.

On this occasion, I ask you to forgive me any rights of yours I may have failed to fulfil.

As I conclude my speech with these feelings, I wish our branch every blessing and wish success to our branch president and to the board of directors.

I thank everyone who contributed to this organization and greet you all with respect and affection.

Abdurrahman KAAN

President of MÜSİAD