MÜSİAD KIRŞEHİR OPENING DINNER PROGRAM

4 August 2021

Honourable Member of Parliament,

Honourable District Mayors,

Of the Kırşehir Business World and of the political parties, (AK Party Kırşehir and Kırıkkale Provincial Chairmen)

Esteemed Chairmen and Representatives of the Chambers, Commodity Exchanges and Civil Society Organizations,

My Esteemed Members of the MÜSİAD Board of Directors,

Our Branch Presidents Coming from the Neighbouring Provinces (Aksaray, Kayseri, Ankara, Kırıkkale)

The esteemed president and members of our Kırşehir Branch,

Esteemed Members of the Press,

Ladies and Gentlemen

With the joy of having come together once again in Kırşehir, I greet you all with respect; welcome, you have honoured us.

Esteemed Guests,

During the pandemic and afterwards a new world economic system developed, and with the effect of global climate change and drought as well, new living conditions emerged. This new situation showed us realities that we may summarize as being able to fend for oneself and to be self-sufficient.

As Türkiye, we must focus on developing the appropriate strategies and road maps in order to take our rightful share of the trade and investment environment that has emerged after the process which began with the pandemic.

Despite the difficult conditions of the pandemic, I am happy to be in contact with Anatolia as far as circumstances allow by means of our branch general assemblies, and thus both to hold our general assemblies and to have conversations with you about the economic, commercial and political agenda of our country.

With the conditions of normalization, praise be to God, we have begun to come together again. The full normalization we moved to as of July will be reflected positively both in our economic life and in our social peace.

I would like to state this once again:

This is a global pandemic, and it is not possible for it to end completely all at once.

With the new measures, supports and incentives we will develop against the fluctuations that will occur from time to time, we as a country will manage this process successfully to the end. Indeed, while all the countries of the world were contracting seriously, we, together with China, achieved a serious growth rate and thus proved once again how dynamic an economy we have even under all these difficult conditions.

Esteemed Guests, my brothers and sisters of MÜSİAD,

at every opportunity, in order to take the pulse of Anatolia, to come together with our members, to be in touch with them and to convey sectoral problems to the relevant authorities by listening to them directly from those concerned, I have been constantly on the move for our MÜSİAD, in which I was raised and in which I have served at every stage.

I feel both happiness and honour in this. Because MÜSİAD is not a capital group squeezed into a single region with a narrow sphere of influence. MÜSİAD is the liveliest witness of the social, political and economic history of this country, and indeed one of the elements that built it.

As will be recalled, last year, after the first shaking in economic activity following the first shock of the pandemic, the recovery process that distinguished Türkiye from comparable countries drew the attention of the whole world.

The Turkish economy, which grew by %1.8 over the whole of 2020, became in the first quarter of 2021 the fastest-growing economy within the G20 after China.

We too had stated that we saw this growth of %7 as a harbinger of the exit from the pandemic and that this development showed the world that the centre of investment, production and trade is Türkiye.

With the effect of the easing of the closures implemented because of the pandemic and of strong fiscal incentives, we believe that the positive growth trend of the Turkish economy will continue in the coming period as well, with the policies implemented by our Honourable President and the government. We expect growth above %15 in the second quarter.

Despite the slowdown in credit growth and the high interest rates, the increasing pace of vaccination raises our expectations that economic activity will gain momentum, especially in the third quarter beginning with July and thereafter.

As MÜSİAD, we believe that GDP growth will be realized above the %5.8 targeted for 2021 within the scope of the New Economy Program (NEP). Current data also support this expectation of ours.

With the revival of economic activity that contracted because of pandemic conditions, we believe that the contribution of domestic demand to growth will record an increase.

Economic and commercial activities that had contracted all over the world have finally begun to open up and even to expand. However, especially with regard to taking a share of investments, while developed countries fell behind, developing countries attracted the world's foreign direct investment at a rate reaching %70. Our country, on the other hand, did not receive the share it wanted from this fertile flow.

When the last twenty-year period is taken into consideration, the data show that our values in attracting foreign direct investment have fallen for the first time and that some foreign investors have moved away from our country.

This situation is a harbinger that in the coming period we are at the door of a highly critical era in terms of sustainable development.

The inflationary environment we are currently in and the high credit costs show that we are still a risky investment area.

Great duties fall upon us here. Investment is now made and defined in the world under entirely new conditions.

By keeping pace with this change, we too must approach investment not merely as inviting companies in certain countries here as partners, but as presenting Türkiye as an investment market.

Esteemed Guests,

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.

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.

While cities in the world with similar characteristics have reached enormous figures both in production volume and in their contributions to GNP, it is unacceptable for our cities that possess the same values to be economically confined to a certain area.

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.

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 transferred to the right places, and that investors are reached and guided.

In addition to this, of course, it is also essential that the values particular to each city of our country be explained far better.

And this is possible only through a new investment network that is spread to every corner of the world, that draws investment, production and trade information from every point, that knows investment environments, and that establishes the system to bring investors together with companies in Türkiye.

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, will serve this purpose, and will thus both operate investment diplomacy and attract to our country the active investment diaspora abroad.

Esteemed Guests,

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 of city economies is essential.

Thus 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.

On our travels, in which we tour every point of Türkiye, we obtain a certain amount of data. 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 of ours. We gave this work the name “Developing and Branding Cities with Their Unique Values”.

Determining a correct industrialization policy comes through finding, supporting, enlarging the scale of and increasing the capital strength of promising companies that will keep this economy standing in order to create city economies, and, with a domestic and national production drive, both branding the cities and strengthening the companies. I call this running city economies for the execution of industrialization.

Kırşehir, which has an economy based predominantly on agriculture, is unfortunately among our provinces where the industrial sector has developed little.

While 80 percent of the active population is engaged in the agricultural sector, the weight of the industrial sector in employment stands at only 7 percent.

In 2020, when exports declined across the country, Kırşehir's export volume contracted by 9.3 percent compared with the previous year and stood at USD 202.4 million, while in the same period it recorded a foreign trade deficit by importing USD 251.7 million.

In order to bring Kırşehir, which we see last recorded a foreign trade surplus in 2014, back to this level in foreign trade, it is essential to produce new projects that will increase manufacturing and employment across the province.

In this context, the fact that exports recorded an increase of 38.2 percent in the first 6 months of 2021 compared with the same period of the previous year has been a gratifying development for the Kırşehir economy.

The share of the automotive sector, which is at almost 90 percent in the province's exports, is highly important in revealing Kırşehir's potential in the manufacturing sector.

Along with this, the share of agricultural exports within the total exports of Kırşehir, whose economy is based on agriculture, must absolutely be increased. We believe that with the development of both non-agricultural manufacturing and the agricultural sector, the true economic potential of Kırşehir will begin to come to light.

In this context, the brand province we determined for Kırşehir has been Clermont, which is geographically situated at the centre of France.

Situated in the Rhone-Alpes region, France's second most populous and wealthiest region, Clermont comes to the fore in the food processing, pharmaceuticals, electronics, medical products, machinery and clothing sectors with a size of USD 17.5 billion.

With a size of USD 3.6 billion and a per capita income exceeding USD 6,500, we believe that Kırşehir too amply possesses this potential.

Esteemed Guests,

Before completing my speech with these feelings, I wish ease above all to our nation, to the duty teams and to the state officials who are fighting the fires that have broken out at more than one point in our country.

May my Lord grant that these fires, which burn our hearts, come to an end as soon as possible. As MÜSİAD, from the first day we have been reaching the regions damaged by the fires and supporting the people of the region through our branches. Until these difficult days are overcome, we will always be ready to do whatever is in our power.

MÜSİAD is a school, a home, a cause.

Into my four years of MÜSİAD presidency I have tried to fit many projects, countless friendships, hundreds of visits and, of course, the renewal process that expresses institutional transformation.

To be remembered with goodness for what we have added to our MÜSİAD and, of course, to our country is my greatest wish

On this occasion, I ask you to absolve me of any right of yours that I may have left unfulfilled.

As I complete my words with these feelings, I thank everyone who contributed to this beautiful organization that has brought us together here today, and I greet you with respect and affection.

Abdurrahman KAAN

President of MÜSİAD