“THE ROLE OF MÜSİAD IN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT”
TOKAT
30 JULY 2019
Honourable Governor,
Honourable Mayor
Esteemed Members of the MÜSİAD Board of Directors,
Esteemed MÜSİAD Members and Friends,
Esteemed Representatives of our Local and National Press,
Welcome to our meeting, in which we will hold consultations and come together with our members and friends for a heart-to-heart talk; you have brought joy with you.
From the moment we set foot in Tokat, with the feeling we experience in all the cities of Anatolia, we have been advancing upon fertile lands, upon the works of an ancient civilization, and virtually within an open-air museum.
Tokat, which Evliya Çelebi described as “a mansion of scholars, a homeland of the virtuous and a cradle of poets”, was an important centre of culture and trade throughout its history.
In this ancient city we too will speak plenty of trade today, and we will put our minds to what more we can do for the future of our country.
Dear Friends,
We are business people who work with all our strength so that our country may attain a structure that grows by producing. We spend the greater part of our energy in order to be able to build Türkiye’s future with that precious heritage it has received from its past and with the strength of its ancient civilization. All our effort, our concern and our aim is this.
As MÜSİAD, we attach great importance to each and every meeting we hold at home and abroad. Because while sharing knowledge and experience, we complete one another. We know that we need this togetherness in order to grow together and to become strong together.
As a business person you can do business at every point of the world and grow your business. While increasing your commercial gains, you can also multiply your personal wealth. But when you do this on the axis of individual benefit, you will have designed not the future of your country but your own personal prospects.
We, as MÜSİAD, have never since the day we were founded been focused solely on increasing our personal wealth; our aim was never primarily to make money. The development not of the individual but always of society has been our priority.
With this responsibility, we come together with business people above all in Anatolia and in the four corners of the world, and we work in line with our country’s common goals.
While strengthening our commercial activities, we carry out exchanges of ideas, put forward projects, and share their outputs with our economic administration, with policymakers and with the public.
We regard this as one of the most important conditions for being able to achieve regional development and holistic development.
The strong bond among the members and friends that MÜSİAD has formed with the success of its widespread network at every point in our country and abroad is a great privilege for us. The data that MÜSİAD gathers thanks to this bond and its ability to process these data is one of the greatest indicators of its strength in the field.
And this is precisely why MÜSİAD is at a key point in regional development.
On the one hand we are expanding our fields of activity everywhere in the world, and on the other we are weaving a strong network in our country and reaching every one of our cities. Today we are continuing our activities with 87 contact points at home and, abroad, in 94 countries, with 224 contact points in total.
Alongside the general picture, we also determine local problems and develop solution proposals.
Unlike other NGOs, MÜSİAD makes a great contribution to regional development. Thanks to its broad organizational network, it reaches micro data directly.
As you know, in regional development it is a great advantage to be able to obtain micro and macro data together.
We are the only NGO that can take micro information directly from the grassroots and process it; our difference lies at this point.
While preserving our close bond with our members at the point of having command of the field, we also go to every corner of our country and examine on the ground our regions and the development of our cities. By meeting face to face with the people of the region and with our investors, we reach sound information.
Today I would like to share with you some data concerning our Tokat, which possesses an important tradition of trade in Anatolia.
We see that Tokat, which in 2002 was able to export only USD 5.8 million, reached an export success of USD 19.8 million in 2018. Tokat thus increased its exports by 5.8 percent compared with the previous year and gave support to the external-demand-driven growth of the Turkish economy.
While in this period Fruit and Vegetable Products were the most exported product group, this group made up 55 percent of the province’s total exports. In the light of these data, I would like to state that Tokat must by all means develop its product range in foreign trade.
We have no doubt that Tokat, whose total exports in the first half of 2019 decreased by 7.9 percent compared with the same period of the previous year, will make up this loss in the shortest possible time.
On the import side too, it is seen that Tokat has recorded an important development in recent years.
Tokat, which in 2002 was in the position of importing USD 5.6 million, succeeded in exporting USD 17.7 million as of the end of 2018.
Thus the city gave a foreign trade surplus of approximately USD 2.1 million in 2018.
When we evaluate the 16-year development, these figures draw a gratifying picture for the region; but of course we will not be content with this picture.
We will work harder in order to be able to carry Tokat further at the point of production, investment and exports.
From here I would like to call out to our investors and our business people: we will explain at every opportunity that regional development is important for the development of our country and for its reaching its future goals. You too, put your shoulder to the wheel in this direction. Direct your investments to Tokat.
Believe in the strength of your country, trust in the potential of your country. Come, let us all together bring Tokat to the point we have set our sights on. Let us all together carry our country into the future.
Distinguished Guests,
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, in one of his novels, says through the mouth of his character: “It seems to me that writing down what I have seen and heard is my greatest duty towards the coming generations.” *
As business people devoted to their homeland, we too have duties that fall upon us. Beyond conveying what we have seen and what we have heard, we are obliged to put our shoulder to the wheel.
As MÜSİAD, we have been acting with this responsibility for 30 years. After our General Assembly, which we held in May, we also launched our own institutional and structural transformations, and we are completing them.
We planned this change, which we call Renewal and which we are carrying out within our own body, by remaining faithful to our fundamental values and our founding purposes, to which we have been firmly attached from the day we were founded until today.
With its 30 years of knowledge and experience, MÜSİAD is being renewed and refreshed in order to continue on its way as a far more effective and globally strong national capital platform.
A powerful transformation is being experienced in the world. The conditions of competition in the economy and in trade are changing. An entirely different world order is being established. In harmony with the political and economic change in the world, MÜSİAD is at the same time preparing itself for 2023 with a solar-layered structural model that will be a model for the world and for our country.
Therefore Renewal is a necessity and a pilot study.
With its expanding structure, MÜSİAD has turned into a huge capital organization; because the old system had come to be unable to respond to this change, systematic transformations were designed.
That the members of such a large institution could not receive the share they deserve from national income, and that, despite the labour and struggle they put forth, they could not create the social perception they wanted and deserved, was not just.
MÜSİAD, which stood behind its homeland and its state in this country’s most difficult times, which put its shoulder to the wheel, and which is the UMBRELLA INSTITUTION of the growing companies made up of SMEs, is the pilot project of national capital and its strength. It has now become, as it deserves, a base of capital.
We launched the Renewal process 2 years ago. Carrying out meticulous work, we drew up our road map.
The process took shape as a result of the meetings held at every level and in every region.
The demands, complaints and expectations coming from our members were collected and evaluated by the central administration.
While the form of the new structuring and the path to be followed in this process were being determined, the institution’s existing structure and functioning were examined for 1.5 years and the failing points were identified.
All the processes were conducted not from a desk or from a single centre, but directly in the field.
As one of the methods of analysing a system best, the work was carried out not from outside but from within, integrated into the system yet without interrupting its functioning.
In the field, the focus was on the contribution and value that MÜSİAD produces for its members within the existing structure, on the level that ought to be, on our goals, and on the strategies and plans to be implemented while advancing towards these goals.
In the new term we are building our structure upon two fundamental visions: business development and business environment development.
“Business development” is producing a project and creating joint working areas over projects.
Without Business Development activity, it is not possible to be an active player in the market. In this way one can only take on a structure that serves multinational companies. And this means falling far from the great goals that Türkiye and we as MÜSİAD have determined.
Business environment development, on the other hand, may be summarized as feeding MÜSİAD’s breadth and depth in the field through the projects produced.
No matter how much business we develop, if we cannot create a suitable and compatible business environment, that is, a market, partnership or investment environment, our competitive power decreases and producing added value becomes impossible.
That is, producing business and building the environment in which that business will be marketed are two fundamental goals locked to each other. The planning and implementation system has been designed upon these two main goals.
So, what kind of contribution will the renewal process make to MÜSİAD?
Renewal is a work in which we take our members as the basis. That is, our priority is our members.
We grow with each one of our members; we have reached today on your shoulders, and from now on we will reach the goals we have set before us again by walking together with you.
Therefore MÜSİAD is obliged to be of benefit to its members and to be a means for them to gain in many senses. And it is precisely in order to be able to achieve this more powerfully that we say renewal.
Conducting this process in an extremely sensitive manner, we completed the umbrella work and shared it with you;
The MÜSİAD Renewal Process consists of the stages of consensus, preparation, simulation and implementation. At the point we have reached now, we are at the third stage. By completing the integration, we will together bring the structure to perfection.
For a large institution like ours, which is a traveller on a long road, individual effort and determination are valuable; but what is essential is to walk together with fellow travellers who trust one another and who value one another and their cause.
On this road a believing team is important, and we are aware that with you we are a great family and a strong team.
I hope that our new process will bring good above all to our country, to our business world and to our business people. I believe that with our friends who say “Our Concern is Türkiye” we will continue on our way in the new term, growing even stronger.
Distinguished Guests,
In a difficult geography, Türkiye is protecting its integrity, its unity and its independence by waging great struggles. In this struggle there are from time to time parties that are beside us and that in time take up position against us; but our stance has never changed.
Recently an extremely active agenda has been experienced in international politics.
As you know, on the basis of its sovereign rights arising from international law, Türkiye assigned the drilling ships Fatih and Yavuz and the seismic research vessels Barbaros Hayreddin Paşa and Oruç Reis to carry out hydrocarbon work in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Today we see that alliances aimed at excluding Türkiye from the region are being formed.
We are business people; politics is not a field in which we hold sway. But together with the latest developments, as the president of an institution representing thousands of business people, I would like to say this: as always, today and tomorrow too we will stand beside our state.
In this direction, I would also like to state that we support the decisions taken by our state.
For us what is essential is the homeland, the interests of our nation, the integrity of our state.
Distinguished Guests,
While giving an end to my words with these feelings, I wish that our Tokat Branch, to which we present its branch charter today, may put its signature to successful works in line with the goals of MÜSİAD and of our Türkiye. May it be blessed and auspicious.
Hoping that our meeting will bring good to our country and to our business world, I thank everyone who has contributed to our organization.
Abdurrahman Kaan
President of MÜSİAD
- Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar / The Time Regulation Institute