PROMOSYON SHOW 2021 FAIR
SPEECH BY MAHMUT ASMALI
İstanbul Expo Center, 29 September 2021
Esteemed
Presidents and Representatives of our Business World, of our Civil Society Organizations,
and of our Professional Organizations,
Our Esteemed Guests,
Distinguished Members of the Press,
I hope that the Promosyon Show 2021 fair, which we have come together today to open, will bring good things to our promotion, printing and press sectors and to our national economy.
We are passing through a period in which very important developments are taking place in Türkiye and in the World.
All over the world, extraordinary developments are taking place in every field, from the economy to social life, from foreign policy to security.
Over the last 20 years Türkiye has, from the economy to social life, from transportation to energy,
from foreign policy to national defence, shown very great progress in many fields.
Very great services have been rendered in the national and spiritual field.
May God be pleased with everyone who has laboured, first and foremost our esteemed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
While the COVID 19 Pandemic, the most important development of recent years, created great shock and confusion all over the world, Türkiye is getting through this difficult process quite successfully and prudently.
Praise be to God, Türkiye, with the rational investments and the great transformation it has made in the field of health over the last 20 years, has become one of the countries that manages this pandemic best in the world.
At a time when even developed economies were experiencing great difficulties, Türkiye succeeded in keeping the negative effects of the pandemic on the economy limited.
It is achieving record increases in exports and investments, first and foremost in economic growth.
Just like the successful process in the field of health, we wholeheartedly believe that, thanks to our geographical position, our strong infrastructure in logistics and the manufacturing industry and our qualified workforce, Türkiye will make a great leap forward in the coming period.
As MÜSİAD, with 89 branches in 81 provinces at home, more than 200 contact points in 95 countries abroad, a total of over 11,000 members and an economic size consisting of approximately 60,000 companies, we will be the greatest supporter and stakeholder of this leap today, as we were yesterday.
Distinguished Guests,
With the Covid 19 disease, which appeared in the world at the end of 2019, being seen in our country as well at the beginning of 2020, production and manufacturing processes in many sectors were disrupted. Because of the international closures that began as the disease increased, declines were experienced in import and export rates. One of the fields the pandemic affected was fairs. Although fairs held in virtual environments and online marketplace applications seemed to be a solution, the place of the fairs where the sector comes together, introduces its products and meets its customers was something else altogether.
On this occasion, it is a gratifying development that our business people have come together once again at such fairs and that the trade which is the lifeblood of the economy has begun. As MÜSİAD, we too try to support fairs in various fields together with our members who do business in dozens of different sectors under our roof.
In the post-pandemic period as well, as MÜSİAD we will continue to be the voice of our business world with our branches and representative offices in all four corners of our country.
Our country needs business people who, in every field and every sector, from our smallest SME to our industrialist doing business on a large scale, will reduce dependence on foreign sources and deliver their products and services to the whole world with an export vision. In recent years we have witnessed the actions of ill-intentioned capital owners in our financial markets and in exchange rates in the economic field. We have seen that these processes caused difficulties for our business world in terms of the cost of purchasing imported products. In addition, our current account deficit, one of our country’s chronic problems, must also become balanced and stand at minimum levels. I am of the opinion that the sole key to these problems lies in taking steps that support domestic production and in ensuring that the domestic option is preferred in the supply of raw materials.
Distinguished guests,
The promotion sector, with its rich structure covering many sectors, is a sector that has reduced its imports over the years and that has very high export potential. In this sense, I believe that the sector, which contributes to the export figures of many sectors from textiles to plastics, from paper to wood, from metal to leather, will contribute to the national economy even more strongly.
The more we are able to minimize our economic dependence on foreign sources, the more we will be speaking of a more prosperous country. On this and many other matters, by working together with you in the new period of our MÜSİAD and by keeping the channels of communication open, we will present our solution proposals and the projects we have developed to the competent authorities of our state.
Furthermore, we observe that promotional and publicity products stand out among all advertising media with their low budget and the ease with which they reach the target audience. According to the information I have received from colleagues representing the sector, the Turkish Promotion Sector, which showed a continuous growth trend for four years before the pandemic period, manages to be effective in the international arena even under pandemic conditions.
On this occasion I hope once again that Promosyon Show 2021 will bring auspicious and abundant business to our sector and to our economy, and I extend my gratitude to our sector association, to the organizing company that laboured in this organization, and to you, our valued companies and business people, who have made this fair valuable by taking part in it as exhibitors and visitors.