2023 foreign trade figures announced

Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) President Mustafa Gültepe, speaking at the program where the 2023 foreign trade figures were announced in Ankara with the participation of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, stated that 2023 had a special meaning for Turkey, saying, "We celebrated the 100th anniversary of our Republic with great enthusiasm. We kept the promise of a record we made at the beginning of the year, thank God. Turkey has covered significant distance in exports over 100 years. We have written a different success story, especially in the last 20 years. We have grown our exports exactly 7-fold in 20 years. There is a great success here."

Expressing that Turkey's potential is higher, Gültepe continued as follows:

"Our country deserves much more. As exporters, we consider it our duty to give our country the best it deserves. With this awareness, we started the second century with the goal of placing Turkey among the top 10 countries in exports. The Century of Turkey vision put forward by our President increases both our self-confidence and our responsibility. Our targets of 375 billion dollars in goods exports and 200 billion dollars in service exports for 2028 in the 12th Development Plan will be our first test. We examined these targets closely at our Delegates Workshop. We created our roadmap for 2028 in line with the views and suggestions of all 27 of our sectors. 2023 was difficult in terms of our exports. The contraction that began in global economies in 2022 continued last year as well. The disaster of the century, which took the lives of over 50 thousand of our people, also dealt a major blow to our production and exports. In a period when markets were shrinking, our labor-intensive sectors struggled to meet price points due to high costs. Regional wars and conflicts reflected negatively on our trade. We turned to alternative markets to compensate for our losses. We signed the highest number of delegation organizations in our history during this period. We organized 72 purchasing delegations and 150 trade delegations. We traveled a total of 1.5 million kilometers. In other words, we traveled around the world 40 times in 1 year with our exporters."

"We increased our unit export value to 1.57 dollars"

Gültepe emphasized that while global trade contracted by 2 trillion dollars, they closed 2023 in the positive with the work they carried out, stating, "We increased our share in global exports from 1.02 percent to 1.06 percent. In 2023, we added 18,000 more companies to our export family. We increased the total number of exporting companies to 120,000. We broke export records in 60 countries. We made over 1 billion dollars in exports to 50 countries. We achieved export records in 10 sectors. We exceeded 1 billion dollars in 23 sectors and 10 billion dollars in 8 sectors. We increased our unit export value to 1.57 dollars. We are happy to have fulfilled the promise we made at the beginning of 2023."

Stating that goals can be reached by producing more and adding value to what is produced, Gültepe noted the following:

"The path to added value goes through technology, R&D, innovation, design, sustainable production, and branding. Access to finance under suitable conditions is of great importance to prepare such an infrastructure. We took significant steps in 2023 to solve the financing need. We brought the Turkish Trade Bank, Turkey's first private bank with national capital, to our exporters. The Turkish Trade Bank will now be the second address for our exporters. We struggled with access to finance in the first half of last year. The problem was largely solved in the second half. We signed a protocol for favorable financing with 11 public and private banks. In accordance with the protocol, around 5,000 of our companies used 1.7 billion dollars in loans.

The world is changing and changing conditions also create new needs. 2023 was a year in which competitiveness weakened in our labor-intensive sectors. We submit to our President's appreciation our expectation that the minimum wage support, which is 700 liras, be increased to 1400 liras so that these sectors, which also contribute to employment, can return to a competitive level. On the other hand, there are many different supports for exporters. We clearly see their positive contribution in our work. For example, every 1 percent increase in loans means over 300 new companies starting to export. For this reason, increasing support and expanding Eximbank resources is of great importance."