MÜSİAD EXPO 2020 OUR PRESIDENT MR. RECEP TAYYİP ERDOĞAN VISIT
PROGRAM SPEECH TEXT
Mr. President, Distinguished Guests,
I greet all of you with my deepest respect and affection, above all our esteemed President, who has honoured us once again with his presence at our MÜSİAD EXPO 2020 Trade Fair, which we have held for the 18th time this year under the slogan Global Trade Is Here and which has now become identified with MÜSİAD. Welcome, you have brought us honour.
Mr. President,
From the very first day we set out, you have led us with your support and your guidance, and by describing MÜSİAD as a flagship you have in fact illuminated our path and our mission.
If MÜSİAD continues on its way today as a leading organization in its own field, this is the work of the inspiration it has drawn from you and of the experience it has gained from your efforts. I once again offer my thanks before this assembly, on behalf of myself and of my institution, for your existence and your presence. You are especially welcome.
Even in these days when the pandemic process still retains its force, the EXPO which we organize in order to be the language of communication and the bridge of our country's economy in the fields of trade and investment has this year consolidated its strong brand image not only as the fair with the broadest participation during the Pandemic period, but also by achieving many firsts.
I hope that EXPO 2020 — in which thousands of companies will be represented over an area of 70 thousand square metres, which targets welcoming close to 100 thousand visitors, and in which, with its distinction of being Türkiye's first hybrid fair, participation and visits will also take place in the virtual environment — will be a means of blessings for our country's economy.
Within the scope of EXPO 2020, where 400 purchasing delegations from 50 countries have been hosted, MÜSİAD places its 315 active contact points, both at home and abroad, at the service of our state and our nation on the path to becoming our country's bridge of investment and trade.
Our fair, crowned today by God's permission and by your presence, is being held with the participation of hundreds of firms from 24 sectors; if even a drop of our effort proves effective and beneficial in our country's new-era economic road map, even in this difficult period of the Pandemic, this will be our greatest reward.
At our fair, where participation with stands has been secured from many countries, from Venezuela to Uzbekistan, from Azerbaijan to Cyprus, from Indonesia to Germany, the intense demand from the countries of Europe, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Africa and MENA encourages us to support our country's new-era investment policies.
With the Entrepreneurship area, one of this year's firsts at the Fair, the projects that have become Türkiye's new investment power are being exhibited.
Likewise, our country's justified pride, electric vehicles, are also being brought together with visitors within the scope of the Fair.
At this year's EXPO, the Caravan Tourism initiatives — designed as a project by MÜSİAD for the first time, presented by us to the public within the scope of our project for developing new tourism resources and diversifying tourism investments, and which have found a considerable base for themselves — are also being exhibited.
In order to contribute to trade and investment networks, our Honorary Consuls, who are among the pioneering elements of diplomacy, which has become the language of communication of trade, will come together as of today and will hold the ‘MÜSİAD-World Honorary Consuls Trade and Diplomacy Summit’.
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 in the development of exports and of commercial relations between the relevant countries and our countries.
At our fair, where thousands of B2B business meetings are targeted, on Thursday, at the International Business Forum (IBF), which was attended by industrialists and business people from all four corners of the world and where panels were held, the post-Pandemic processes were discussed under the heading of the Virus Economy.
Mr. President,
The pandemic process was a difficult test that the whole world went through, and it still continues. Many countries did not come out of this test with good results, not only in terms of state administration but in terms of humanity as well.
We managed to steer this process, first of all, through our state's effective crisis planning and our nation's sense of mutual aid and solidarity. As MÜSİAD, in order to carry out this duty that fell to us in the best possible way, we established our Crisis Management Centre in the very week the first case was seen and ran all our networks at home and abroad like a data transfer mechanism. We set a tight working calendar in order to spread the measures taken by our state to the grassroots, to process the demands and suggestions coming from the grassroots instantly and convey them to the relevant ministries, to prepare reports, and thus to facilitate the passage between the state administration and the grassroots.
In reaching our citizens abroad we mobilized our field organizations spread across the world; and in identifying those in need at home we mobilized our local elements. We carried out the distribution of 94,000 aid parcels, the purchase of 424 zimem ledgers, the support of our members in difficulty through the qard al-hasan fund, and information work so that business people in difficulty could benefit from state supports in the most effective way. In this context we also thank our state for the support packages it has introduced for the business world.
The new world order taking shape during and after the pandemic process heralds for us, beyond the risks, entirely different advantages as well.
The pandemic has in fact been a bursting point of the constricted world capitalist system. At a time when the power of production is shifting towards the Asian economies, a West worn down by its ageing population and by the power struggles among its regional economic elements has both failed to display the expected success in the pandemic test and, while seeking new paths for itself, has once again grasped the importance of the Eurasian pact at the very centre of which our country lies.
Türkiye, as if confirming once again the saying that geography is destiny, is becoming an element of passage, of supply and of socio-political balance for the new world powers at whose centre it stands.
In a world where, above all in energy and food, production security rather than production is now taken as the basis and where new supply chains are shaped along the axis of these concepts, Türkiye is determining a new road map of production, of trade and of course of investment around the criterion of self-sufficiency, not only in key sectors but in every field of high value-added manufacturing industry.
Mr. President,
Approximately two years ago, in the second term of my Presidency, at the opening ceremony of our new building and at our ordinary general assembly, which we held with your presence as well, we had set out for you the road map and the targets of the new-era MÜSİAD. We had declared that we were launching our Renewal process in order to prepare in advance for the new world system and to build a system compatible with the Presidential System of Government. Our motto at the outset was together. Together from eternity to eternity.
Praise be to God, in this process we advanced with determined steps and carried out the duty that fell to us. We have fulfilled almost all the openings we planned and promised within the framework of our Renewal process. Now I would like to share with you the justified pride of gathering the fruits of this process with our large-scale projects.
Mr. President,
Under your leadership, our country has entered a process of renewal in order to realize the 2023 targets within the framework of a new economic road map built on three pillars and based on price stability, financial stability and macroeconomic stability.
That our power of production and industrialization should increase, above all in investments, through both macro policies and legal reforms, and that our monetary power should settle at the line it deserves, is also our greatest wish, and we are here with whatever is in our power on this matter.
For this is also our new-era slogan of departure. Shoulder to shoulder with the state, for the nation and within the nation, and together with everyone whose cause is Türkiye, we are here for Türkiye.
With the awareness that a country whose economy is not strong cannot protect its gains in other fields, as MÜSİAD we stand by you with all our means and strength in the mobilization focused on a new stability, growth and employment that you have launched.
It is essential that the decisions taken and the policies implemented be spread to and operated at the grassroots, not only on the international plane but domestically as well.
To expect this to be realized entirely by public power would be an approach that goes no further than aggravating the burden on the State. In the new period, non-governmental organizations and capital organizations in particular must work as its effective elements in the field in order to lighten this burden of the state.
In the New World order, civil society organizations, and in particular structures such as MÜSİAD that are spread over a wide area and are intensively present in the economic field, serve as a balance between the state administration, that is politics, and society.
At this point, with its widespread network and the diversity of its member profile, MÜSİAD defines itself within the 2025 line of the world socio-economic system understanding not merely as an NGO but as a platform, and it is carrying out its transformation with this vision. We called this Renewal.
At the point we have now reached, we have repositioned our global and local field depth within the framework of three fundamental visions, and we have also structured our committees within the scope of the ASSEMBLY as project production bases.
Our first fundamental vision is the function of communication and interaction. We defined it as the function of a passage in explaining and conveying state policies to society.
In a sense, by establishing a structure that brings the state closer to the people or that at the same time conveys the demands of the field, we created the data centre of micro information.
To this end we signed Strategic cooperation protocols with the effective institutions of the state, above all the Presidency of Strategy and Budget. Thus, in order to reach the 2023 targets, we created areas for acting jointly on matters such as joint project generation, including the sharing of information. We put ourselves forward for the mission of being our state's effective element in the field.
By bringing together our world presidents with the Head of the Presidency Investment Office, who pleased us with his presence at our World General Administrative Board held yesterday within the scope of the Fair, we put on the table the system of trade and investment agencies to be established within MÜSİAD.
Thus we have brought to life the project of using MÜSİAD's international field presence to attract direct foreign investments and to bring together firms seeking investment opportunities in our country with our national and domestic firms; and, alongside this, of articulating investment with production and trade synchronization through the trade networks system. I thank once again, in your presence, the Presidency Investment Office, which supports us in this systematics and with which we work in strategic cooperation.
Mr. President,
Our second fundamental function is the function of distribution. New economic trends are moving towards the principle of incentivizing and funding not sectors but projects.
We can even say that one of the architects of this idea in the eyes of the state is MÜSİAD.
The matter is this: to bring to life projects compatible with the country's planning strategies. To this end, our total of 23 committees under the MÜSİAD roof, which we established during the Renewal process, have begun to gather potential investors and industrialists in Anatolia around specific projects, with projects compatible with their own thematic or sectoral fields.
Thus the projects launched at the centre began to spread to Anatolia in accordance with the conditions of the relevant region, and to encourage the capital power there not to keep money idle but to invest in projects or to become partners in them.
For example, with our Investment and Production Bases Project we created a model that, by building living and production zones where all their needs will be met in the same environment for our small-scale firms which have difficulty producing in narrow spaces and therefore cannot reach scale, will in time turn them into institutionalized firms ready to move to organized industrial zones. We have completed the first prototype of this model. The construction of the second will begin in 4 months.
I thank from here our esteemed Minister of Industry and Technology and our Minister of Environment and Urbanization, who have given support in the work to turn our project, whose foundation-laying ceremony was performed by the Head of the SBB, into a KSS standard.
We also named this model, in short, SME INCUBATION CENTRES. This model, in which all the needs of SMEs from education to accommodation, from social activities to art environments are met within the same living space, in fact plans to become, by closing its gates in possible disaster or pandemic processes as well, a safe production and living space both for our workers and for our producers and their families, and thus to prevent possible disruptions in production.
This project of ours too was one of the works planned from the centre and transferred towards Anatolia. At the same time, this project was registered as a project under state protection by the SBB within the scope of YOİKK.
Likewise, with our Smart Agricultural Cities Project we launched an initiative in order to encourage rural development and in this way to support reverse migration and to attain a homogeneous population structure.
We presented this as a model to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. I would also like to thank from here our esteemed minister, who did not leave us alone at the Project Launch and who has supported our project from the very beginning. With the Smart Agricultural Cities Model, with its opportunities targeting the population crammed into big cities and especially women's and young people's enterprises, and moving from the logic of living the comfort of the city in the countryside, we developed an initiative to make rural life attractive and to support rural development.
Today many of our members in Anatolia are carrying out preparatory work in order to implement this initiative in their own regions.
Many more projects of ours like these have been produced by our committees and spread to the grassroots; branding cities in the field of gastro-tourism through gastro-economy and Turkish Culinary Arts, establishing structures such as Caravan Tourism and Field Hospitals through multiple partnerships, creating a secure purchasing platform in the second-hand vehicle market, creating a secure real estate buying and selling platform, and, in line with the 2023 targets, growing selected SMEs in 20 places and 23 locations to turn them into Türkiye and World Brands. This and many other projects have become the fruits of MÜSİAD's Renewal adventure.
Our third fundamental function is the function of analysis. The aim here is to build elements that will support macro policies in order to reach macro targets, and to spread these to the grassroots.
Mr. President,
Right here I would also like to speak of a project we have been working on for two years,
To draw up Türkiye's economic map and to make the city pairings,
The second is, with the Academy Public Industry Cooperation Institute, to bring project development work together with the support of the Public sector and the functionality of the private sector
And the third is to determine, with the MÜSİAD Brands, six main branches in line with the 6 strategic targets under MÜSİAD's main brand.
As is known, in the world of the future it is not states but cities that will compete. Today there are such cities that their share in GNP alone almost reaches the size of a state. Because these cities have gained their international superiority both regionally and through branding, and they use these advantages in favour of their own countries.
Moving from this point, we too have drawn up Türkiye's economic map. We completed a matching study between the cities of the World and our cities according to their local superiorities, the shares they take from national income, their natural riches or their socio-demographic and economic characteristics.
Although in many respects they are almost equivalents of one another, we saw the gaps — sometimes reaching billions of dollars — between the contribution to national income or the total income of our city and its equivalent world city, and we investigated their causes. Our fundamental aim here was to compare our cities with their equivalent examples and to prove that they too could enter among the branded cities of the World by fulfilling certain conditions.
What kind of conditions? For example, the strategic operation of natural riches, the growth at firm scale of the strategic sectors specific to the province in accordance with their purposes, the correct channelling of investments, the development of appropriate incentive policies, and so on. Thus we set targets and road maps for our cities to grow. As you too often state, a place you cannot touch is not yours. Both with the advantage brought by MÜSİAD's widespread organizational network and in line with my own Anatolian tours and member visits, we have kept an inventory of all our cities. The moment we touched them at the right investment points, we held mind-opening conversations about how they could grow, and we prepared minds for this structural transformation.
God willing, next month we will share this project of ours with the press in detail and announce it to the public. We hope, Mr. President, that this too will be a work that gives serious support to the new era you have opened in macroeconomic growth, especially in the sense of putting regional economies back on their feet.
Our second work, as I mentioned just now, is the Academy Public Industry Cooperation Institute. This Institute, on which we continue to work without interruption, aims to bring together the support and opportunities provided by the Public sector with the real demands of industry — above all through the universities with which we have cooperation agreements, and through the relevant faculties, departments or centres of many of our universities — and to run it both as a preliminary evaluation and as a project production centre for our projects.
I feel the happiness of sharing with the public, for the first time in your presence, this fruit of our Renewal process as well, which we plan to put into operation as of January.
Mr. President, Distinguished Guests,
That the Renewal process should reach this point and yield its fruits as good works for our state and our nation was our greatest wish. Now, as I share our work with you within the scope of MÜSİAD EXPO 2020, I feel both the justified pride of holding Türkiye's most comprehensive Global Trade Fair and the pleasure of announcing to you the fine outputs of a difficult process.
We said we are here; may my Lord grant us to continue to be here as well.
As I conclude my words, I wish urgent healing from God to our industrialists and to all our citizens from the world of politics and business who have caught COVID 19; and for those who have passed away, God's mercy, and condolences to their relatives. I also offer our heartfelt thanks to all our healthcare workers, above all our esteemed Minister of Health, for their selfless work in this process.
I heartily thank our Board of Directors, our Global and Local High Boards, , our Secretariat General and our sponsors, who did not withhold their contributions in the realization of this organization.
Mr. President, I offer my thanks for your presence and your patience, and I greet with my respects your good self above all and all our esteemed guests.