Our President Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
Honourable Ministers,
Distinguished representatives of the Turkish and international business world,
International purchasing delegations,
Esteemed MÜSİAD Branch Presidents and MÜSİAD Members,
Distinguished Guests,
(Esteemed Members of the Press)
I present my respects, above all to our President Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has honoured the Gala Dinner held at the TÜYAP Fair and Congress Centre within the framework of the 19th MÜSİAD EXPO, to our esteemed ministers, to the distinguished representatives of the Turkish and international business world who are with us, to the international purchasing delegations, to our esteemed diplomatic missions attending from all four corners of the world, to our representatives abroad, to the ambassadors, consuls and honorary consuls in our country, to our valued MÜSİAD members and to our distinguished guests; welcome...
Mr. President;
Distinguished Guests,
For more than 32 years MÜSİAD has been working with great effort for the material and moral development of Türkiye. With this mission, MÜSİAD, which stands out as Türkiye's most widespread business-world civil society organization, has reached 165 branches and contact points, with 84 at home and 81 abroad. With our more than 13 thousand members and the 60 thousand enterprises belonging to our members, we provide employment for 2 million people. Within this framework, as Türkiye's largest capital and cooperation platform on both the local and the global scale, we provide significant added value to the country's economy.
With its strategic decisions and initiatives in the post-pandemic period, our country is advancing with confident steps towards becoming one of the world's leading production and export bases. Strengthening its logistics and supply chain networks day by day, Türkiye has attained the position of a centre of global and regional trade.
As MÜSİAD, we shall always be the supporters of our entrepreneurs who create domestic and national technologies, and of our investors and exporters who compete with global giants through their national and international investment projections. By managing supply chain processes correctly, we have become one of the most preferred logistics centres in both distant and nearby geographies. We shall continue to follow up every project that will build awareness towards Türkiye's growth through investment, employment, production, exports and a current account surplus.
Mr. President;
Distinguished Guests;
With its political stability, the size of its domestic market, its strategic location, its qualified young population, its advantageous investment incentives and its inexhaustible energy, Türkiye is an attractive investment centre in the international arena. Through the cooperation of our Government above all, our ministries, our NGOs and our private and public institutions, our country has been among the G20 countries that conducted the pandemic process most successfully. We are growing stronger through transparent and predictable policies that take competition as their basis within the free market economy.
With the strength of our investors, entrepreneurs and exporters who follow developments in the world closely, interpret needs, both give direction to production strategies and provide added value to the export ecosystem, we are closer than we have ever been to the goal of Türkiye taking its place among the 10 largest economies in the world.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests,
With its political stability, the size of its domestic market, its strategic location, its qualified young population, its advantageous investment incentives and its inexhaustible energy, Türkiye is an attractive investment centre in the international arena. Through the cooperation of our Government above all, our ministries, our NGOs and our private and public institutions, our country has been among the G20 countries that managed and overcame the pandemic process most successfully.
Following the rate of 7.5 percent relating to the first quarter of the year, the Turkish economy increased its tempo in the second quarter and achieved growth of 7.6 percent, thus sustaining its positive growth trend for the 8th consecutive quarter. Ranking third among the G20 countries, it also maintained its positive divergence. Moreover, the fact that in this period net foreign demand and investments, alongside domestic demand, also made a positive contribution to growth was a highly important indicator in that it showed the Turkish economy had recorded homogeneous growth.
Mr. President;
Distinguished Guests;
MÜSİAD EXPO, which has undertaken an important mission in realizing Türkiye's 2023 export target and which opened its doors this year for the 19th time at the Tüyap Fair and Congress Centre, reached participants from 124 countries and 24 different sectors. On a 90 thousand square metre fair area, with 25 thousand square metres of stand space, more than 100 thousand participants and more than 60 purchasing delegations, we built a dynamic ecosystem in the foreign trade process not only for our MÜSİAD members but also for our producers, entrepreneurs and exporters in Türkiye and for the international investors we hosted.
Through the events we organized within the framework of MÜSİAD EXPO, Türkiye's most comprehensive general trade fair, we brought together diplomatic missions from all four corners of the world, our representatives abroad, and the ambassadors, consuls and honorary consuls in our country with our business people. We proved Türkiye's domestic and national production power to the whole world.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests;
In the aftermath of the pandemic, with MÜSİAD EXPO 2022, which we coordinated around innovative strategic objectives, we aimed to carry our country's export and production vision to a far more advanced level. We offered all our esteemed participants a different fair-organizing vision in which the privileges of the digital world are combined with face-to-face communication.
Thus we brought about a global organization in which we announced our domestic and national production power to the world, opened up to brand-new markets in the triangle of production, investment and exports, and established dynamic collaborations. With the collaborations and investment projections realized within the framework of MÜSİAD EXPO, we aimed to be instrumental in business connections worth approximately USD 5 billion.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests,
It must not be forgotten that MÜSİAD is the address where the attraction of Türkiye, the abundance of Anatolia and the diligence and determination of the Turkish people meet... Without compromising on the motto ‘High Morality, High Technology' and without deviating from right and justice, we advance with confident and strong steps.
Our declaration of 2022 as the ‘Year of Investment' carried MÜSİAD's responsibility to a far more advanced level. Together with both our members and the stakeholders with whom we cooperate, we have undertaken an important mission in Türkiye's attainment of its 2023 targets. In 2023, when we shall mark the 100th year of our Republic, a new era of surging forward, the Century of Türkiye, will begin, God willing.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests;
Our ‘Anatolian Production and Investment Movement', which has reached 30 cities and 50 strategic points and through which we aim to provide employment for 40 thousand people by the end of 2022, is among the most important reflections of this mission. MÜSİAD members have made investments of TRY 35 billion across Türkiye. We anticipate that by the end of the year this figure will reach TRY 40 billion.
Through our Anatolian Economic Diplomacy programme, in which we bring together our entrepreneurs, investors and industrialists in Türkiye with the ambassadors of different countries, we are also leading the development of new business and investment models at great speed. We took the ambassador of the UAE to Kayseri, the ambassador of Niger to Çorum and the ambassador of Hungary to Samsun. Very soon we aim to bring the ambassadors of Japan and Switzerland together with our industrialists as well.
In line with a portion of the projects we have implemented in the international arena and with the requests received, we have united our export-oriented structures under the International Investment Support Office. Thus we shall bring together the foreign institutions and organizations wishing to invest in Türkiye with our industrialists. We shall continue to contribute to our country's strong tomorrows with the ideal of a producing Türkiye.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests;
As our President Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has also underlined, Türkiye aims to reach USD 300 billion in exports in 2023. Within this framework, MÜSİAD EXPO 2022, which we held at the TÜYAP Fair and Congress Centre, occupies a very important position in the realization of national targets.
We also introduced the MÜSİAD International Investment Support Office – MÜSİAD Invest at the MÜSİAD EXPO fair. Through MÜSİAD Invest we shall undertake an advisory role by sharing accurate, sound commercial information and data. We shall guide entrepreneurs wishing to open up to global markets and foreign investors wishing to invest in Türkiye.
Likewise, through the MÜSİAD Trade Office we shall guide our entrepreneurs and industrialists wishing to open up to international markets. Türkiye, which has further strengthened its logistical position through the mega projects developed over the past 20 years, continues with all its strength to be the favourite of investors. We confirmed this interest during our business trip to the United States as well. We have an East Coast Strategy specific to the American region. In logistical terms, our country is closer to the eastern region of America than many countries are. By making good use of this advantage, we shall increase our influence in the US and regional markets. The target of completing our organization in the G20 countries, which we set out when we took office in September 2021, is also of great importance in this respect. Very soon we shall put our organization in Mexico into operation and, with our work in Argentina, we shall complete this target of ours.
Not only in the United States, but also during our business trip to Uzbekistan and in our contacts in the European countries, we witnessed a positive picture towards our country. The economic world order that is being reshaped after the pandemic holds great opportunities for Türkiye. Steps taken at the right time will enable us to make the best possible use of these opportunities.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests,
This year, following the pandemic, we brought about a process of far greater added value in terms of production, export and cooperation strategies. Within the framework of MÜSİAD EXPO 2022 our teams carried out extremely meticulous work. In coming together with qualified purchasing delegations, we proceeded with a product- and service-focused approach. Within the framework of the commercial research we conducted as MÜSİAD, we formulated an approach that will provide added value to the Turkish economy. By evaluating the requests coming from our members, we brought our business people together directly with their counterparts in different product and service categories. With MÜSİAD EXPO 2022 we established a trade network uniting continents. We held production- and export-focused consultations with our participants from Europe, Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, that is, the MENA region, and prepared our road map for the new period.
We hosted purchasing delegations from more than 60 countries, above all Azerbaijan, Russia, China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran and Algeria. In this context, by coming together with entrepreneurs, investors, industrialists and business people from many countries, we were instrumental in the establishment of various collaborations in both the production and the foreign trade process.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests,
I would like to share with you a blessed, auspicious and fine undertaking of ours…
With this belief and vision, in order to carry out joint ventures and create strong brands, in order to undertake large-scale business and realize our dreams, we are bringing together the capital of our members and establishing a VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENT FUND.
We have intensified our work for this blessed and fruitful project, we have closed ranks, and we are advancing rapidly. I hope that very soon we shall also announce our good news of investment.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests,
Through dynamic events such as the B2B meetings held within the framework of MÜSİAD EXPO 2022, positioned as the heart of commercial diplomacy, and the 26th International Business Forum, we successfully reflected the strength Türkiye possesses on the axis of production and exports. Esteemed business people, investors and entrepreneurs from all four corners of the world took part in the IBF Congress. We came together with our branches abroad and with more than 1000 business people from Canada, Türkiye, Europe, the United States, the Middle East, North Africa and Russia, as well as with the representatives of the other stakeholder countries that are members of the forum. We held meetings within the framework of the theme ‘Food Security and the Protection of the Generation' and shared our forecasts for the future. Tomorrow, within the framework of MÜSİAD EXPO, we shall achieve a first by holding the D8 Ambassadors Summit with the participation of the D8 ambassadors. In this context a memorandum of understanding, an MoU signing ceremony, will also be held.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests,
As the MÜSİAD Family, alongside our vision of providing added value to production and exports, we continue at full speed to contribute to humanitarian diplomacy through our social responsibility projects and to commercial diplomacy through our global initiatives.
While carrying the abundance and compassion of Anatolia and our values of civilization to every corner of the world in close solidarity, we shall also contribute to intellectual production in the commercial and economic sense through the workshops we shall open and the reports we shall publish. We shall raise qualified people and shall support our young and women entrepreneurs even more in every field. In order to raise the generations that will be the pioneers of this world in the future and will give direction to learning, science, industry, investment and production, we have sown seeds with Young MÜSİAD. Praise be to God, our number has passed 4 thousand. We shall advance with a special vision that embraces every segment of society and gives them the value they deserve.
The food crisis triggered by climate change has not only made an agriculture- and environment-friendly understanding of economics important, but has also revealed the importance of an economy of contentment in place of a consumption economy. As MÜSİAD, we shall voice at every opportunity these matters, which concern not only our country but humanity as a whole.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Guests,
In 2023, when we shall mark the 100th year of our Republic, a new era of surging forward will begin. Together we shall build the Century of Türkiye, in which we as a nation shall experience success and peace at the highest level.
As I bring my words to a close, I extend my thanks to our President Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who attended the Gala Dinner of MÜSİAD EXPO 2022, to our esteemed ministers, to our valued diplomatic missions, to our representatives abroad, to the ambassadors, consuls and honorary consuls in our country, to the distinguished representatives of the Turkish and international business world, to the international purchasing delegations, to the MÜSİAD Branch Presidents and MÜSİAD Members and to our esteemed guests.
With the wish of being able to offer a different road map to our investors, industrialists, entrepreneurs and exporters from 124 countries and 24 different sectors, who have given MÜSİAD EXPO a global vision,
Stay well, may God protect you...
Mahmut Asmalı
President of MÜSİAD