MÜSİAD Industry and Technology Summit “MUST 2024”
31 October 2024
Honourable Minister,
Distinguished participants,
Esteemed members of the press,
Dear MÜSİAD Family,
Welcome, all of you, to the MÜSİAD Industry and Technology Summit “MUST 2024”, we are delighted to have you here…
At our summit, which we are holding for the second time this year, we again have very valuable guests with us, as we did last year. Our guests, who will guide us with their experience and accumulated knowledge, are at the same time business people who have carried out very important work in their own fields…
Once again, on behalf of the entire MÜSİAD Family, I thank each one of our guests individually. God willing, their visionary outlook will lead us to new methods and new pursuits.
Distinguished guests,
As MÜSİAD, we have left behind 34 years as an umbrella institution bringing together the industrialists, producers, entrepreneurs and investors of these lands. As individual members of the MÜSİAD Family, we are taking important steps and making investments in order to raise Türkiye’s industry, its economy and its level of prosperity to the highest levels.
God willing, in the coming period too we will continue these investments, which contribute to the future of our country and of our people, once again thanks to our country’s high potential.
As we have always maintained, MÜSİAD is an institution which, while carrying forward the understanding of the “Medina Market” and the cause of civilisation, stands for contributing to our country and our nation, for making our future better and for providing new job opportunities for our young people.
Of course, I believe it is extremely important that an institution such as MÜSİAD, which has had the word “industry” in its name since its foundation, should undertake such events focused directly on industry.
I extend my special thanks to our MÜSİAD Industrial Production and Policies Commission, to our commission chairman and to our members, who have taken on the MUST event and have realised it with devotion for two years.
Honourable Minister, esteemed guests,
Türkiye, with its people, its industry, its production capabilities and its entire presence, is an extremely strong and productive country. This is the very reason for our frequently saying that we “have strong potential”. Our country is indeed not yet in a position of having mobilised its own potential. God willing, we will see examples of this in the coming period.
We believe that the stronger we are, the more our technology will develop, and the stronger we are, the more power our industry will gain.
Because, as all of us know very well, being strong also depends on having a say in economic terms… If being strong means speaking out on the entire world stage in politics and diplomacy, then the solution lies in possessing economic power and full independence.
The way to achieve this is to strengthen domestic production and to keep it dominant at all times. As we at MÜSİAD have always emphasised, we must strengthen domestic production and always support it.
Because in this way our country will become far stronger and will have a greater say as a global political actor both in its region and in the world. Because what constitutes real power is, above all, the capacity to hold economic power. This is precisely why at MUST 2024 we say “Make a Move for Industry”, “Make a Move for Innovation in Production”, “Make a Move for Strategy in Investment”…
On this occasion, we strongly condemn the treacherous terrorist attack carried out against TUSAŞ, one of the flagship institutions of our defence industry, and we wish our entire nation a speedy recovery. We pray for God’s mercy upon our martyrs who lost their lives in the terrorist attack, and we wish a swift recovery to our wounded.
God willing, we also want it to be known that we will devote more investment and more effort to our defence industry, to our technology and to all our production processes in order to forestall and prevent such attacks.
Distinguished guests,
Sustaining growth at the level of production is a common feature of all economies that continuously develop themselves. In this respect, Türkiye’s ability to display a lasting growth and development performance is directly related to the production power and capacity of Turkish industry.
In addition to the many experiences we have had in recent years, the treacherous attack on our flagship defence industry institution also shows that the importance of domestic production in the manufacturing industry is extremely critical. Moreover, it is a known fact that economies with flexible and broad manufacturing capacity weather possible shocks far more easily.
The Turkish economy, with the moves it has made especially in the last 20 years, has made serious advances in the industrial sector and is progressing with confident steps towards its goal of becoming a global and regional production base. In line with this goal, the strategy of raising the share of the manufacturing industry in GDP above 30 percent and of taking a place among the world’s top 10 countries in terms of manufacturing industry production is the principal criterion determining our vision at this point.
In this context, the realisation of the targets set out in the Medium-Term Program, which has a guiding character for us, is extremely important. In particular, we need to increase the competitiveness of the industrial sector by freeing it from its structural problems, to undergo a serious transformation towards high value-added advanced technology, and to solve the problem of qualified labour swiftly.
For our country’s sustainable development and its proper integration into the global economy make it imperative to gain global competitiveness through a technology-based, innovative economic structure. It is our common ideal for our country to realise its potential in this field and for industry to grow together with technology.
This is precisely why at MUST 2024 we say “A Move for Industry”, “A Move for Innovation in Production”, “A Move for Strategy in Investment”…
Honourable Minister,
Distinguished guests,
Dear MÜSİAD Family,
The MÜSİAD Industry and Technology Summit, which we are holding for the second time this year with great pride, is bringing us together with very important guests from the business world. God willing, at our summit we will have the opportunity to listen to the vast experience of our highly esteemed guests.
God willing, the visionary work of our esteemed guests will broaden our perspective as well, and thanks to this our summit, which aims to bring industry and technology together, will reach its goal.
As I conclude my remarks, I hope that the MÜSİAD Industry and Technology Summit 2024 will bring blessings to our country and to our nation.
I thank you very much for your participation and greet you all with respect and esteem.
May God protect you.
Mahmut Asmalı
President of MÜSİAD