MÜSİAD EXPO 2020 OPENING SPEECH

MÜSİAD EXPO 2020 OPENING SPEECH

Honourable Minister,

Our Governors, Our Members of Parliament, Our Mayors,

Esteemed Presidents and Representatives of the Chambers, Commodity Exchanges and Professional Organizations,

Esteemed Presidents and Representatives of the Non-Governmental Organizations, of Our Political Parties, of the Institutions and

Organizations,

Esteemed Business People Who Have Come from All Four Corners of the World,

Esteemed MÜSİAD Members and Friends, My Brothers and Sisters of Young MÜSİAD,

Esteemed Members of the Press,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I thank you for your participation in MÜSİAD EXPO, which has now become a MÜSİAD tradition and of which we are holding the 18th this year, and I greet you with respect and affection. Welcome to EXPO 2020, which we planned and organized meticulously within the framework of the new normals that the pandemic process has taught us, in order not to disrupt the course of economic life and to contribute to our country's production- and export-oriented economic policy, and on which we set out with the slogan Global Trade Is Here; you have honoured us.

This year, for the first time, TÜYAP, Türkiye's largest fair organizer, and MÜSİAD, Türkiye's broadest capital platform, have joined forces to hold EXPO 2020, in which thousands of companies will be represented in 10 halls over an area of 70 thousand square metres and which aims to host close to 100 thousand visitors, and in which, with the feature of being Türkiye's first hybrid fair, participation and visits will also take place in the virtual environment; I wish that it may be a means of goodness for our country's economy.

Our fair, at which more than 8 thousand B2B business meetings are targeted with preparations made within the framework of social distancing rules and serious sanitation measures, will host important meetings through the International Business Forum (IBF), which will also be attended by industrialists and business people coming from all four corners of the world.

Within the scope of EXPO 2020, at which 400 purchasing delegations from 50 countries will be hosted, MÜSİAD, a platform with a broad organizational network with contact points in 95 countries, is also achieving, through its wide field presence, the intensive participation in the fair of ministers, senior bureaucrats, members of the press and distinguished business people from abroad.

MÜSİAD EXPO 2020 will also bring together the honorary consuls who are the communication language of trade; the honorary consuls who play an active role all over the world, above all in the USA, Europe and Asia, will contribute to the development of our country's exports by sharing with business people the experience and accumulated knowledge they have gained there.

In addition, at the fair, MoU agreements will be signed with 20 new organizations from 4 continents, and thus an important step will have been taken towards the development of exports and commercial relations between our countries. Because of the pandemic that is effective throughout the world, the MÜSİAD EXPO preparations have been made meticulously. MÜSİAD EXPO, which set out with the goal of being the largest predominantly physical fair event after the pandemic, will this year offer participants a ‘hybrid fair' experience for the first time. While thousands of business people and industrialists who come physically are hosted within the framework of social distancing rules, participants will be able, thanks to the technological infrastructure provided by TÜYAP, to come together with fair visitors and do business on the digital platform not only in the fairground but even after the fair has ended.

Another of MÜSİAD EXPO's firsts this year is the “Entrepreneurship Area”, which will be opened for the first time. The investments that have become an important power of Türkiye and that have made an impact in the world will meet visitors in this hall.

In the organization that will bring the investor together with the entrepreneur, it is aimed to make a direct contribution to employment in Türkiye by ensuring the creation of new business areas. Important investors of the world are also expected to attend the fair and hold significant meetings in the entrepreneurship hall.

Differently at this year's EXPO, caravans that will appeal to every income level will also take place at our fair in order to support Caravan Tourism. As you know, caravan tourism was put forward for the first time by MÜSİAD within the scope of our strategy of Developing New Tourism Resources and diversifying Tourism Investments, and it has met with considerable demand on a rather broad basis. In this respect, we too have given place to Caravan Manufacturers at this year's EXPO. Apart from this, national electric vehicles will also be displayed this year within the scope of EXPO. As MÜSİAD, we are very happy to give place within the Fair to this initiative, which is a source of our national pride and which should also be perceived as a supporter of the Green Deal. The fact that hundreds of companies from 24 sectors are participating in our fair, whose opening we are holding today with God's permission and with your presence, gives us hope for turning the wheels of our country's economy even in this difficult period of the pandemic.

The intense demand from Europe, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Africa and the MENA countries for our fair, in which participation with stands will take place from many countries, from Venezuela to Uzbekistan, from Azerbaijan to Cyprus, from Indonesia to Germany, and the fact that close to 15 thousand visitors from 125 countries will come, makes us especially happy in these days when we are renewing our national macro policies for the sake of production, trade, investment and employment.

Honourable Minister, Esteemed Participants,

On the axis of the new concepts and the new normals that the pandemic process has brought to world economic and commercial life, we too must now adapt to an economic and commercial logic compatible with the new process that has begun and with its new rules, and position ourselves within the world conjuncture in this framework.

The period that began with the pandemic may have brought, as it were, new customs to the old village; and yet we had been hearing its footsteps and voicing them since the first quarter of 2019. From the second quarter of 2018 onwards, the growth trends of the 20 Developed countries on a quarterly basis were following a downward course, whereas the 20 Developing countries, especially from the second quarter of 2019, were settling into a growth-oriented course. In short, as the world economy shifted eastwards, the production bases were changing hands and capital was finding new production areas. In a world in which national economies were regaining strength, while the production capacities of the developed countries under the dominance of large companies were decreasing, the world's new investment and production area was the blocs formed by the developing 20. Despite the excess supply, continuously appreciating money had come into a state that classical monetary policies could not explain.

The new capitalism was showing us that we needed to develop a new concept of money and, around this concept, new value and supply chains.

Threat had at times become a tool of political perception management rather than a factual reality, and while economic phenomena were being explained through financial parameters, a drift away from the fundamental concepts of the real economy had begun.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the growth forecasts of the OECD and the WB pointed to a contraction in production in the world. The projections revised in November, on the other hand, had been calculated by simulating the effects of the trade wars.

The pandemic process became, in a sense, a bursting point for a world system that had become this constricted. We must bear in mind that the Covid-19 crisis broke out in an environment in which the Eurozone had long been wrestling with a deep crisis, Japan had been quite unable to overcome the stagnation it was in, the other BRICS countries had fallen well behind China's dynamism, and global trade, taking its direction from the China–USA tension, was becoming more and more strained by the day. The question of where the tension between China and the USA will evolve in the post-crisis period, whether it will turn towards a conciliatory path or into an economic conflict of ever-increasing intensity, still preserves its place on the agenda.

Europe, which was gravely wounded after Brexit, is being swept onto a dangerous path after Covid-19 not only politically but also economically.

In sum, we can state that the discourse of “Nothing will be as it was before”, put forward after every crisis, carries a much different and stronger meaning after this crisis. At the point we have reached today, we are now speaking of the new paradigms of the post-pandemic new world order. Gradually shaking off the painful shocks of the first period, we are making the positioning of the new normal, that is, of the new production, trade, investment and supply systems, from Türkiye's point of view.

It pleases us that our country's economy has entered a process of renewal and of determining a new road map on the plane of macro policies and legal reforms. However, one truth must not be forgotten either. While the state determines its policies, this is possible with the sustainability of the decisions taken, with these decisions being explained well to the grassroots and, of course, with our being able to express ourselves well on the international plane.

Communication and interaction are of vital importance in this respect, that is, in terms of economic policies gaining acceptance and setting the element of trust in motion.

For the state's public reforms to gain both acceptance and resonance in the capital, raw material and labour markets, the efforts of public institutions and organizations alone are not enough. We, as non-governmental organizations, must fulfil the duty that falls to us and, by touching every region, province and member within our own field depth, must test and hold on to the nerve networks of this transformation.

Honourable Minister, Esteemed Guests,

In line with this purpose, MÜSİAD has both completed the process of renewal in its own structure, thereby adapting to its own body a system compatible with the new world system and operating rapidly and agilely on a project basis, and, in this way, has taken its field presence out of the logic of being merely an element of organization and placed it on the systematics of a network economy in which investment, production and trade can be operated in a synchronized manner.

I thank in your presence everyone who contributed to this. I personally, both before the pandemic and during the pandemic, tour Anatolia, above all through member visits, witnessing at first hand the expectations and views of business people and compiling these as micro field data. The same logic has become one of the fundamental principles of MÜSİAD's new functioning.

One thing is clear: a place you cannot touch is not yours. Thank God, MÜSİAD, both at home and abroad, operates its broad sectoral and regional spectrum as an element of economic communication with a field presence that is rarely matched.

The MÜSİAD EXPO 2020 Fair is also one of the concrete proofs of this mission of ours. I wish that this initiative of ours, on which we set out in line with the philosophy that “no contribution is made to macro transformations by turning inward and working as a closed circuit”, and whose fruits, God willing, we will see both within the scope of the fair and in the period afterwards, may bring goodness to our country's economy. Honourable Minister, Esteemed Guests,

Economic competence is the key factor in today's new world order. In this context, our greatest wish is that our national and domestic production targets be diversified in sectoral terms by shaping our industrial capacity in line with a new macro production plan. It is undeniable that the national investments we will make in high value-added sectors, above all our key sectors, are of vital importance particularly for the contribution they will make to our price stability policy in the medium and long term.

In this process, the encouragement to invest not only of the companies that gain advantage through scale but also of our SMEs, the locomotive element of the Türkiye economy, and the improvement of the factors that will negatively affect their appetite for investment, above all access to space and financing, will both enable them to grow in time and reach far higher-volume production capacities and will provide positive returns for our employment policies.

Within the framework of this purpose, we are always ready to support our SMEs in particular on their journey of branding and growth, with the projects developed both by our committees and by our MÜSİAD Brands. In this framework, you can find and visit MÜSİAD's works and brands in the MÜSİAD hall located in our Fair area.

The future planning of strategic resources and the capacity to respond instantly to change, that is, “economic reflex”, is an indicator of our capability for economic struggle. And this will only be possible by using interaction and international-scale communication at the highest level and effectively in every field of diplomacy.

As MÜSİAD, if you recall, our watchword at the outset was together. We had said that we are together, in good days and bad, with everyone whose cause is Türkiye. Now we are adding one more motto to our journey and we say we are here. We are here shoulder to shoulder with the state. We are here within the nation, for the nation. We are here for this country. As I conclude my words, we wish a swift recovery from God to our industrialists and chamber presidents from the world of politics and business and to all our citizens who have caught COVID-19; and for those who have passed away we wish God's mercy and offer our condolences to their relatives. I also extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our healthcare workers, above all our esteemed Minister of Health, for their self-sacrificing work in this process.

I sincerely thank our Board of Directors above all, our Local and Global High Boards, our Secretariat General and our sponsors, who did not spare their contributions in the realization of this organization.

I thank you for your presence and your patience, and I sincerely congratulate everyone who contributed to the realization of this great organization. May God open our way. May He make our fair beneficial and a means of goodness for our country.

I greet you with respect and affection.