MÜSİAD BALIKESİR GENERAL ASSEMBLY

24 JUNE 2021

Honourable AK Party Chairman

My Esteemed Members of the MÜSİAD Board of Directors,

My Branch Presidents Coming from the Neighbouring Provinces

The Esteemed President and Members of our MÜSİAD Balıkesir Branch,

Esteemed Members of the Press,

At our general assembly, which has once again been the occasion for us to come together in Balıkesir, I greet you with respect; welcome.

Esteemed Guests,

We are in Balıkesir, one of the important production and trade regions of Marmara. Looking briefly, we see that the city economy is dependent on industry at a rate of % 51'.

Since one of the province's main sources of livelihood is also agriculture, agriculture-based industry is developed. Manufacturing industry constitutes %17 of total GDP.

There is a saturation for industry in the provinces in the immediate vicinity of Balıkesir. Let alone new investments, investment land cannot be found even for the expansion of existing investments. In this context, Balıkesir is seen as a reserve area for the relocation of industry and is also a candidate to become the new focus of industry.

The element that it is important to take into consideration regarding the relocation of industrial investments to Balıkesir is its transportation and logistics structure.

Together with the advantage provided by Balıkesir's proximity to three major industrial centres such as İstanbul, Bursa and İzmir, the completion of the Gebze-Orhangazi-İzmir and Kınalı-Tekirdağ-Çanakkale-Balıkesir Motorway projects will add significant strength to the region in terms of transportation and logistics. Moreover, the Gökköy Logistics Centre located in the city centre of Balıkesir will function as the most important collection and transfer centre of the Great Anatolian Logistics Organizations (BALO) project.

Balıkesir, which ranked 24th among the provinces of Türkiye exporting the most in 2020, managed to increase its exports by %5.5 to 617.5 million in this period when exports contracted across the country.

While the groups standing out in the said exports were, respectively, Fishery and Animal Products (%23), Electrical and Electronics (%17) and Ready-Made Clothing and Apparel (%10), the proportional distribution of these prominent sectors within the total exports of the province shows that the Balıkesir economy is not fragile and that product diversity has been achieved.

In Balıkesir, which exported goods and services to a total of 158 countries in this period, the first three places among the countries exported to were taken by Iraq, Germany and the USA.

As MÜSİAD, we will do everything in our power so that Balıkesir may sustain this successful graph and carry it higher.As of the first months of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic became the main agenda in our country as it did all over the world. The process that began in 2019 continued in 2020 with an impact beyond estimates and continues in 2021 as well.

With its elements that embrace not only itself but also its hinterland and that trigger regional growth, our city of Balıkesir is also one of the important stops on the road we have set out on in order to develop city economies.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

At the meeting I held yesterday with the economy directors, which took place with quite broad participation, we finally found the opportunity to explain our project of developing and branding cities with their unique values. Because one thing is now very clear: we have to keep pace with the peculiar conditions of the new world order. The most important of these is the correct channelling of investments and, in particular, the adoption of city economies as the basic strategy in investment planning.

As you know very well, from the first day I took office until the last days on which I will hand over my duty, I have striven to be a president who does not remain only at the Head Office and who constantly tries to take the pulse of the field and to be in touch with you, our esteemed members.

Because MÜSİAD means THE FIELD. MÜSİAD is the home, the homeland and the school of people devoted to their country, like you who have given their hearts to it. On every city visit I both listened to the basic problems or demands of my members and took note of the economy that each city would develop around its own unique values. In the future it will not be states but cities that compete. For this reason, every city that develops and becomes a brand is in fact a substantial capital stock gained for the national income.

While their counterparts in the world, that is, cities possessing similar characteristics, have reached enormous figures both in production volume and in their contributions to GNP, it is not right for our cities that possess the same values to remain economically confined. ;

This is possible only through determining the unique values of cities, bringing those values together with appropriate investments and investors, continuously monitoring the efficiency of support and incentives, and, of course, the branding of that city in the process of turning value into asset.

I see that potential especially in Balıkesir.

My dear brothers and sisters,

If you notice, despite the difficult conditions of the pandemic, our country reached a growth rate of %7 in the first quarter of 2021. This is a very important success. But is growth alone a sufficient criterion for development? That is, what should the basic conditions of sustainable growth be? The answer to these questions lies in creating correct investment strategies, in being able to attract foreign investment to our country, and in establishing an economic network with high added value around city economies.

What is important here is to provide a growth environment that is continuous and whose volatility has been reduced to a minimum, that is, one that creates confidence for both domestic and foreign investors.

Türkiye is a dynamic country that can move quickly. Because it has a young population and a manufacturing industry culture that can be activated at once. Balıkesir is one of the clearest examples of this. However, there is one thing that we must never let slip from our minds:Our country, with 79 of its cities, is based on agricultural production . There are rare cities in which industry reigns alone. For this reason, we must always keep in mind the vital importance of agriculture for our country both in terms of our competitive advantages in world markets and in the face of the food crises that will emerge in the coming period.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In recent weeks, I delivered a speech on behalf of MÜSİAD in a commission at the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye in which the consequences of Global Climate Change and drought were addressed and in which clean energy resources were also discussed. There I spoke about the work we carry out as MÜSİAD on these matters and about how we have developed projects with a broad vision by seeing the approaching danger before everyone else.

Sadly, the coming years will also bring with them significant difficulties in terms of access to food, especially as a result of the droughts caused by climate change. This situation applies to water as well. Türkiye is not a water-rich country. For this reason, the efficient and productive use of resources and the fertile agricultural lands we will leave to future generations must in fact be among our basic strategies too.

The pandemic reminded us of one more thing: being able to be self-sufficient. If you recall, within the rules of globalization, the free movement of goods and capital had made countries somewhat lazy about production and about making use of their own resources. Multinational companies would easily come to resource-rich countries, carry out production in these countries in favour of their own countries and transfer the profit to their own countries. Pay attention: the new era will be a century in which national economies come to the fore and every country holds tightly to its own resources and to its domestic and national capital. At the head of these resources come, of course, water, agricultural areas, seed, our animals, our mines, our plants that are particular to us and used in medical production, our energy resources, our manpower and, of course, our national companies which, together with national capital, keep us standing in every arena and in every crisis.

It would be a correct step to increase the self-sufficiency policies of all our sectors that are in a critical position in domestic and national production and, in particular, to determine a new strategy for foreign trade.

Esteemed Guests,

As you know, in order to prepare in advance for the new world system, we as MÜSİAD launched our renewal process. Our motto at the outset was “together”. And now we say WE ARE HERE. With all our heart and all our strength, we say WE ARE HERE in order to be instrumental in our country's development and in its writing of a new story. Because the stance befitting MÜSİAD is always to be in the service of its state and beside its nation and its ummah. Two and a half years ago, in the renewal process we launched, we had planned as COMMITTEE names the very headings that have today become the basic working subjects of the European Union. This is the plainest expression of a very clear vision and of foresight.

We have fulfilled almost all the openings we planned and promised within the framework of our renewal process. Now we are gathering the fruits of this process with our large-scale projects.

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 23 committees in total under the roof of the MÜSİAD ASSEMBLY have begun to gather the potential investors and industrialists in Anatolia around specific projects with projects compatible with their own thematic or sectoral fields.

These projects have begun to encourage the capital power in Anatolia to invest in projects or to become partners in them.

For example, with our Investment and Production Bases Project, we created a model that will build living and production zones in which all the needs of our small-scale companies, which have difficulty producing in narrow spaces and therefore cannot reach scale, 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 have begun the construction of the second.

We have to establish production bases for the pandemics and disasters that are likely to recur. By establishing production bases, it becomes possible to protect companies, employees and production in situations of pandemic or severe disaster and to continue without a full closure.

On the other hand, with our Smart Agricultural Cities Project, we launched an initiative in order to encourage rural development and thus to support reverse migration and to attain a homogeneous population structure.

We presented this to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as a model.

With the Smart Agricultural Cities Model, we developed an initiative to encourage rural life and to support rural development, with opportunities targeting the population squeezed into the large cities and especially the enterprises of women and young people.

Today many of our members in Anatolia are carrying out preparatory work in order to implement this initiative in their own regions.

Many more projects like these have been produced by our committees and have spread to the grassroots.

Branding cities in the field of gastro-tourism through gastro-economy and Turkish Culinary Arts, establishing structures such as Caravan Tourism and Field Hospitals through multiple partnerships, creating a secure purchasing platform in the second-hand vehicle market, creating a secure real estate purchase and sale platform, and, in line with the 2023 targets, growing selected SMEs in 20 places and 23 locations to turn them into Türkiye and World Brands. This and many projects like it have been the fruits of MÜSİAD's renewal adventure.

And now we are trying to put into practice 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 direct foreign investors and to run MÜSİAD's international field presence like a trade and investment system.

You, all our branches and our networks abroad, will be subject to this integration in the new presidency term from where we left off, and, with God's permission, you will be instrumental in our process carrying our MÜSİAD much further forward.

Esteemed Guests,

As I complete my words here, I wish that our branch's general assembly may be the occasion for good things, and I greet you with respect and affection.

Abdurrahman KAAN

President of MÜSİAD