MÜSİAD TOKAT GENERAL ASSEMBLY

12 August 2021

Honourable Member of Parliament,

Esteemed Members of my Board of Directors

Branch Presidents Who Have Come From the Neighbouring Provinces (Sivas, Gümüşhane)

Esteemed President and Members of our Tokat Branch,

My Brothers and Sisters of Young MÜSİAD,

Esteemed Members of the Press,

I respectfully greet you all at our general assembly; welcome, you have brought joy with you.

Distinguished Guests,

While combating the Covid-19 pandemic that began in 2020, we also tried to adapt to the new habits that entered our lives during this process.

Because of the restrictions and measures implemented in order to bring the pandemic under control, we were unable to come together with you for a long time.

With normalization, thank God, we are holding our general assemblies together and making up for the time we have missed.

Today we are in Tokat with you, our esteemed friends.

The economy of Tokat, which has been an important centre of trade throughout its history because it lies on the trade routes connecting Europe to Asia, is largely based on agriculture and on agriculture-related industry.

In this province, described as Türkiye’s orchard, the fertile plains watered by the Yeşilırmak, the variations in altitude and the suitability of the climate for growing a wide variety of products have brought Tokat to the position of a unique agricultural city.

In Tokat, which showed the success of increasing its exports by %83.1 compared with the previous year in 2020, a year in which exports declined across the country, Fruit and Vegetable Products account for more than one third of total exports.

Realizing imports of USD 12.7 million against exports of USD 34.1 million in the period in question, Tokat has thus become one of our provinces posting a foreign trade surplus.

In the January-June period of 2021, the province succeeded in increasing its exports by %17.7 compared with the same period of last year and reached the level of USD 14.3 billion. Imports for this period were announced as USD 7.1 million, indicating that Tokat continues to post a surplus in foreign trade.

Distinguished Guests,

Countries striving to eliminate the effects of the pandemic process, which has continued for more than a year, are carrying out intensive work in order to recover.

On the other hand, we can now clearly see this: 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 correctly, that they are channelled to the right places, and that investors are reached and guided. In addition to this, of course, it is also essential that the distinctive values of each city of our country be explained far better. And this is possible only through a new investment network that is spread across every corner of the world, that draws investment, production and trade information from every point, that knows investment environments and that establishes the system which will bring investors together with companies in Türkiye.

We express this at every opportunity: “in the future it will not be states but cities that compete”. For this reason, the creation 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 transformation of their existing assets into value, that is, the identification of their potential and the increase of the value of the provinces through investments suited to that potential, is an extremely important matter.

We obtain a range of data during our travels through every corner of Türkiye. With this data and with the experience that comes from being in direct contact with you, we created a project, and the matching of cities became the basic starting point of this project. We named this work “Developing and Branding Cities Through Their Distinctive Values”.

The brand province we have identified for Tokat, which has an economy of USD 3.3 billion in size, is the Italian city of Brescia.

The city of Brescia, which is USD 39.3 billion in size, "Brescia is a city and commune in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy. It lies at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometres from Lake Garda and Lake Iseo.

Companies from Brescia, from food to the engineering industry, are generally small and medium-sized and are mostly family businesses. The city is at the centre of Italy’s third largest industrial region.

Distinguished Guests,

We also see our project for the development of city economies as a road map in Türkiye’s process of determining a new investment policy.

The only capital organization that can support the realization in Türkiye of this work, which can be implemented 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 conduct the commercial and economic diplomacy and the investment diplomacy between the world and Türkiye in the most effective way is again MÜSİAD.

The primary duty that falls to us must first of all be a change of mentality. That is, to handle 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 in a healthy way 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.

The MÜSİAD TIA (MÜSİAD TRADE and INVESTMENT AGENCIES) system, which we designed together with the Presidency Investment Office in order to promote Türkiye as an investment and trade market for the direct foreign investor and to make MÜSİAD’s international field presence operate like a trade and investment system, will serve this purpose, and in this way it will both operate investment diplomacy and attract the active investment diaspora abroad to our country.

Dear Friends,

As MÜSİAD, in order to prepare in advance for the new world system, we launched our Renewal process.

Especially after the Renewal process, MÜSİAD is taking its place among the world’s select organizations by arranging its own structure in the face of the new world order and by developing a distinctive management and organization model.

My colleagues and I fought for this throughout our term of office in order to reach something better, and we have no doubt that the brothers and sisters who will come after us will take over this cause and this relay of the flag with the same consciousness and the same principle and will carry it forward.

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 have begun to gather the potential investors and industrialists in Anatolia around certain projects, with projects suited to their own thematic or sectoral fields.

These projects have begun to encourage the capital power 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 living and production zones where all their needs will be met in the same environment for our small-scale companies that struggle to produce in confined areas and that therefore cannot reach scale, 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 the construction of the second will 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 spread to the grassroots.

I believe that, with this integration process in the branches, you will be instrumental in carrying our MÜSİAD much further forward, God willing.

Distinguished Guests, My Brothers and Sisters of MÜSİAD

In a short while, I will hand over my duty as President of MÜSİAD. My greatest wish is to have not disappointed your trust during these 4 years and to have fulfilled the duties that fell to me.

Throughout my term of office, I strove to be a president who kept his finger on the pulse of the business world and of the field.

We express it 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.

As I conclude my speech with these feelings, I wish our branch general assembly to be blessed and greet you with respect and affection. May God protect you.

Abdurrahman KAAN

President of MÜSİAD