MÜSİAD BALIKESİR EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY
BALIKESİR
22 OCTOBER 2019
PROTOCOL (?)
My Esteemed Members of the MÜSİAD Board of Directors,
Distinguished Representatives of the Business World,
Esteemed Members of the Press,
I respectfully greet you all at our Branch General Assembly; welcome, you have honoured us with your presence.
Today we are witnessing yet another handover of the baton in the MÜSİAD journey, which we describe as a relay race.
I hope that this change and our General Assembly will bring about good things.
I believe that our new branch president, my brother Erdem Özer, will carry out successful work for the business world and for our country.
Distinguished Guests,
With its history, its culture, its cuisine and its nature, Balıkesir is one of the paradise corners of our country.
These riches within its borders make Balıkesir one of our special tourism destinations.
Tourism is one of the region's important sources of income. However, when we look at the potential the city carries and at the intensity of demand, we believe that we can do more. As you know, once you succeed in diversifying your tourism alternatives, you also increase to a great extent both the income obtained from tourism and the demand itself.
Balıkesir is one of the cities where we can implement this in the best possible way.
The region possesses features suitable for every kind of tourism alternative.
It offers alternatives not in a single field but in many different areas; this is a great advantage.
We must give priority to investments suited to this purpose and attract more of our investors to the region.
As you know, our country has set itself a goal for 2023: to become one of the 5 countries in the world that host the most tourists and earn the most tourism revenue.
Balıkesir is among the cities that can make the greatest contribution to this goal.
Therefore we need to evaluate the tourism of the region within this broad field and increase tourism investments. We must direct the interest of domestic and foreign tourists here to a greater extent.
As MÜSİAD, in order both to put forward concrete projects and to offer solution proposals, we have established the “New Tourism Resources Development Committee”.
I can summarize the fundamental purpose behind the establishment of our committee as changing the perception of tourism that is confined to a particular field and diversifying tourism.
Tourism is an important source of income for this region; yet when we look at other commercial activities as well, we see a picture that puts a smile on our faces.
In 2018 Balıkesir's exports increased by %15.8 compared with the previous year, rising to the level of USD 615.4 million.
The city, which in 2002 was in a position to export USD 90.2 million, has succeeded in increasing its exports approximately sevenfold in 17 years.
Balıkesir, which exported only USD 95.3 million in 2002, succeeded in raising this figure to USD 416.8 million in 2018.
In addition to the success Balıkesir has recorded in exports in recent years, a serious increase is also observed in its import figures.
Thus Balıkesir, which posted a foreign trade surplus of approximately USD 198.6 million in 2018, provided significant support to the external-demand-driven growth of the Turkish economy. When we come to the January-September period of 2019, we see a contraction that we know to be cyclical. There is an export loss of %3.7 compared with the same period of the previous year.
In this period, in which total national exports grew by %2.6, this performance of Balıkesir indicates that our exporters need to make a little more effort.
Without thinking that this year is already over, we must make good use of the 2-month period so as not to fall behind the previous year at the very least.
I believe that when we show the necessary effort, we will close the gap. We are aware of the reality our country is in; we read and analyse the difficult process ahead of us correctly.
As business people, we also analyse well how we will get through this process.
We will be courageous, my esteemed friends; we will not be afraid of investing and of diversifying our commercial activities.
We say these things as a non-governmental organization present at 311 locations, based on the real data we have obtained.
As you know, in August of last year we were exposed to serious exchange rate attacks and a significant stagnation was experienced in the markets.
As a result of the correct moves of our economic administration, this process was overcome quickly.
The exchange rate attacks began in a successful period in which our economy was growing by an annual average of %5.7.
Yet today the Turkish economy is moving towards positive growth despite the negative growth expectations at the beginning of the year.
At the point we have reached, we see that the current account deficit has declined to USD 1.7 billion in the January-July period of this year.
Moreover, with exports reaching USD 111.4 billion in the first 9 months of the year, the ratio of exports covering imports has reached %84.4.
In the second quarter of the year, with investments contracting by %22.8 on an annual basis, our economy lost momentum.
In the coming period we expect interest rates to fall to lower levels. This development, which will be reflected positively on investments, will halt the contraction, and as of the last quarter of the year a process of positive growth will be entered once again. The New Economy Program announced by our Minister of Treasury and Finance, Mr. Berat Albayrak, shows that we will begin the year 2020 and the period thereafter with positive motivation.
Distinguished Guests,
Along with the radical transformation taking place in the world, economic balances are also changing, and we are witnessing a struggle for power.
States that claim to have a say in the future are taking their measures and reshaping their plans for the future.
Türkiye too has changed its own governance habits in this direction and has become a party to this transformation.
As the business world, we too have not remained indifferent, and we have initiated MÜSİAD's institutional and structural transformations.
We are building this change, which we call Renewal, upon our core values to which we have been committed for 30 years.
We launched the Renewal process in order to make MÜSİAD's sphere of influence and power more effective, my esteemed friends.
In this process, it pleases us to see that the diligence and effort we have shown as the management team have created excitement among all our friends. In the new era we set out saying “Together”, and praise be to God, our friends are responding to this call of ours with enthusiasm.
On this occasion I would like to state once again: we owe the strength of our MÜSİAD today to this spirit of togetherness.
Before coming together with you here in Balıkesir today, we were in Konya over the weekend. We met with our members in Konya and Aksaray
On 16-18 October we held our IBF program in Bosnia and Herzegovina and met with business world representatives coming from different regions of the world. We held a productive business forum.
Fifty of our business people from our Konya and Bursa branches took part in business forums in Malaysia and Singapore on 17 October.
With one of our teams, we organized the India Business Forum in India between 14 and 18 October.
Our Young MÜSİAD attended the Asia-Africa Young Entrepreneurs Forum in China on 15-19 October and examined the investment opportunities in the region on site.
In September, with a large delegation of which I too was a part, we held the Uzbekistan Business Forum and our business trips in which we assessed investment opportunities.
My esteemed friends, this intense pace will from now on be our routine.
We will work harder; without distinguishing night from day, we will advance towards our goals.
In the new era we will continue to process and produce all the data we gather by keeping our finger on the pulse of the field, in line with the interests of our members first and foremost and of our country.
We will produce together, we will grow together.
Distinguished Guests,
As I conclude my remarks, I hope that the change of office that has taken place in our branch will be beneficial for our business world.
I thank all those who contributed to the organization and greet you all with respect and affection.
Abdurrahman Kaan
President of MÜSİAD