MÜSİAD KARABÜK GENERAL ASSEMBLY
10 August 2021
Distinguished Members of the MÜSİAD Board of Directors,
My Branch Presidents Coming from Neighbouring Provinces (Kastamonu, Bartın)
Esteemed President and Members of our Karabük Branch,
Distinguished Presidents and Representatives of the Karabük Business World, of the Chambers, Commodity Exchanges and NGOs,
My Young MÜSİAD Brothers and Sisters,
Esteemed Members of the Press,
I respectfully greet you all at the General Assembly of our Karabük Branch; welcome, you have honoured us with your presence.
Distinguished Guests,
As you know, as a result of the rise in vaccination rates and the sensitivity shown towards the measures, we have entered a process of normalization, and we too have finally begun to be able to come together again with you, our esteemed friends.
We travel across every corner of our country at every opportunity. Within the scope of the visits we carry out in order to reach more people, we began this week with Karabük. Tomorrow we will be in Çorum, and on Thursday, God willing, in Tokat.
Home to our country's first iron and steel plant, Karabük also carries great importance for the national economy.
In the Karabük economy, which has grown and developed on the axis of the iron and steel facilities and their subsidiary organizations, the transport, forestry labour, textile and ready-made clothing sectors are also vibrant.
The fact that all of its villages and %60 of the province are covered with forest has made forest products in particular an important source of income.
The traditional Safranbolu houses, its inns, its bathhouses, the arasta and the blacksmiths' and saddlers' bazaars have also made Karabük a centre in terms of domestic and international tourism.
In 2020, a year in which exports declined across the country, Karabük achieved a significant success, its export volume expanding by %23.6 compared with the previous year to reach the level of USD 335.3 million.
With this performance, Karabük, our country's 28th largest exporting province, also carried out USD 615 million of imports in the same period and thus ran a foreign trade deficit.
The steel sector, whose share in total provincial exports is %90, is the locomotive of Karabük's foreign trade.
In this context, an increase in export product diversity by Karabük — which holds great potential in many products, above all ready-made clothing, apparel, machinery and its components and forest products — will spread the risk, reduce dependence on a single product group in foreign trade and save the provincial economy from the risk of a fragile structure.
For Karabük has the potential to attain a larger production structure with a broad product range.
In the January-June period of 2021, Karabük reached an export capacity of USD 252 million and, by increasing its volume at a rate as large as %81.3 compared with the same period of the previous year, displayed a highly successful foreign trade performance and took an important step towards revealing its existing potential.
Esteemed Guests,
As you know, the Covid-19 pandemic created a wave of panic and shock throughout the world.
Today all countries are striving and implementing new strategies in order to be able to enter a process of recovery.
On the other hand, we now see this clearly: even if the disease-related effects of the pandemic come to an end, the world is on the threshold of implementing a new economic order and brand-new rules.
Therefore we must now follow the new models of development and growth, that is, the new business development models of the new world order.
For this, it is necessary to ensure that investments are attracted in the right way, channelled to the right places, and that investors are reached and guided. In addition, of course, it is also essential that the distinctive values of each city of our country be presented far better. And this is possible only through a new investment network that is spread to every part of the world, that draws investment, production and trade intelligence from every point, that knows investment environments and that establishes the system which will bring investors together with companies in Türkiye.
We state this at every opportunity: “in the future it will not be states but cities that compete”. For this reason the formation of regional economies and city economies is essential. In this way we will have cities that are self-sufficient and that have been able to turn their own assets into value.
The branding of cities and the turning of their existing assets into value, that is, the determination of their potential and the increasing of the value of the provinces through investments suited to this potential, is an extremely important matter.
We obtain a range of data on our travels in which we tour every point of Türkiye. With this data and with the experience brought by being in direct contact with you, we created a project, and matching cities became the basic starting point of this project. We gave this work the name “Developing and Branding Cities Through Their Distinctive Values”.
Determining a correct industrialization policy comes from finding, supporting and enlarging the scale of promising companies that will keep this economy standing in order to create city economies, increasing their capital strength and, with a domestic and national production drive, both branding the cities and strengthening the companies. I call this putting city economies to work for the execution of industrialization.
In this context, the brand province we have determined for Karabük, which has an economy of USD 1.9 billion in size, is the German city of Duisburg.
Duisburg, besides being one of the world's largest inland ports, is one of Western Europe's leading iron and steel centres. Heavy machinery, chemical substances, textiles, wood and metal products are also produced in the city.
In the Duisburg economy, which is USD 16.7 billion in size, the 11,000-kilometre railway network extending as far as China holds a highly important position. In this respect Duisburg, which has come to be called "Germany's Chinese City", is China's gateway opening to Europe.
With the advantages it holds and particularly with its experience and accumulated knowledge in the field of iron and steel, there is no obstacle whatsoever before Karabük's reaching the level of Duisburg.
Distinguished Guests,
We also see our City Economies Development project as a road map in Türkiye's determination of its new investment policy.
The only capital organization that can support the realization in Türkiye of works that can come to life through sound organization and hard work is MÜSİAD.
Because the organization that understands the language of both the industrialist and the SME, that develops projects, that is more dynamic with its renewed structure and that, with its widespread presence, can most effectively conduct the commercial-economic diplomacy and investment diplomacy between the world and Türkiye is, again, MÜSİAD.
The primary task that falls to us must first of all be a change of mindset. That is, to address investment not merely as inviting companies in certain countries here as partners, but as promoting Türkiye as an investment market. And it must be to grow soundly the SME elements that are the locomotive of domestic production and, with the advantages of economies of scale, to bring them together with foreign partners and fund owners, that is, to match them in a sense.
Dear Friends,
In order to prepare in advance for the new world system, as MÜSİAD we launched our Renewal process and determined our starting motto as “Together”.
To the next term we leave the word “WE ARE HERE”.
For Türkiye, in production, in trade, in investment, in every field of society from art to culture, in solidarity, for the development and prosperity of our country, we always say “we are here”.
As MÜSİAD, we are developing projects aimed at increasing the contribution made to the national economy and at improving the culture of partnership among our members.
Our committees, with projects suited to their own thematic or sectoral fields, have begun to gather the potential investors and industrialists in Anatolia around certain projects.
These projects have begun to encourage the capital strength in Anatolia to invest in projects or to become a partner in them.
For example, with our Investment and Production Bases Project we created a model that will build, for our small-scale companies which have difficulty producing in confined areas and which therefore cannot reach scale, living and production zones where all their needs will be met in the same environment, and that will in time turn them into institutionalized companies ready to move to organized industrial zones. We have completed the first prototype of this model, and construction of the second will also begin soon.
On the other hand, 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 to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as a model.
Many more projects like these have been produced by our committees and disseminated to the grassroots.
God willing, through this integration process at the branches you will be instrumental in carrying our MÜSİAD much further forward.
Distinguished Guests, Esteemed Friends,
Because of the conditions brought by the pandemic, 2020 was a difficult year in many fields, above all the economy.
After the first tremor experienced by all countries, Türkiye traced a successful recovery curve.
This was reflected in our capacity utilization rates. Our manufacturing industry, for its part, settled into a course of notable improvement in the last two quarters.
Here I would like to touch on a point I consider important:
As Türkiye, we must certainly eliminate at the earliest possible time the two fundamental factors that force inflationary pressure.
The first is to be self-sufficient. That is, to carry out domestically as well the production of the nearly $175 billion worth of intermediate goods that are imported, to minimize external dependence and of course to give up regarding money as a commodity instrument.
The second is to provide resident savers with new and reliable investment opportunities in which they can put to work the foreign currency and gold they hold and their money in interest or profit-share accounts.
Establishing venture capital funds through which projects will be securitized and, through these funds, reinforcing the culture of partnership so as to encourage production in Türkiye must likewise be a matter with which we must certainly concern ourselves.
We may evaluate this %7 growth in the first quarter as a harbinger of the exit from the pandemic. Indeed, with the base effect we may even see the growth rate in the second quarter above %15. However, for this situation to be sustainable comes from achieving investment-production-trade synchronization and from setting out production as the fundamental economic policy.
The inflationary environment we are currently in and the high credit costs show that we are still a risky investment area.
Esteemed Guests, My MÜSİAD Brothers and Sisters
As you know, in a short while my duty as President of MÜSİAD, which I have carried out with great happiness for four years, will come to an end.
From the first day I took office, I strove to be a president who keeps his finger on the pulse of the business world and of the field.
Contact with our members, consultation and fellowship with them, the constant hosting of the Anatolian branches at the Head Office and thus the raising to the highest level of the closeness between the centre and the FIELD have been my fundamental goal.
We express this at every opportunity: MÜSİAD is a school, it is a home. And we are marathon runners. I believe that our colleagues who will take over the duty and continue this marathon will show every effort to carry our MÜSİAD much further forward than we have.
On this occasion, I ask you to forgive me for any of your rights that I may have left unfulfilled.
Distinguished Guests,
Before I complete my speech with these sentiments, I wish ease above all to our nation, to the teams on duty and to the state officials who are fighting the fires that have occurred in 43 provinces of our country.
May my Lord grant that these fires, which sear our hearts, come to an end at the earliest moment. As MÜSİAD, from the very first day we have been reaching the regions damaged by the fires and, through our branches, supporting the people of the region and our state. Until these difficult days are overcome, we will always be ready to do whatever we can.
Hoping that our branch's general assembly will be a means of goodness, I thank our outgoing branch president, our Karabük branch president Mr Ahmet Nur and his board of directors, and I wish success to Mr Cengiz, who will take over the duty, and to his board.
I pray to Almighty God that our branch will continue, by increasing them, the contributions it offers through its work to the business world and to our country.
I thank everyone who contributed to this organization, above all the president of our Local High Board Mr Ahmet Şekerli, and I greet you with respect and affection. May God protect you.
Abdurrahman KAAN
President of MÜSİAD