Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

Hisarcıklıoğlu stated in his statement:

“Despite the pandemic conditions affecting the whole world, Turkey's economy continues its dynamism and its 7 percent annual growth is extremely gratifying in the first quarter of 2021.

Despite the worldwide contraction, Turkey's continued growth shows how robust the foundations of the economy are and how strong the impact of the measures taken by our government in a timely manner is.

In the second quarter of the year, of course, with the introduction of the base effect, much higher growth is expected to reach over double digits.

We are grateful to our traders and industrialists, producers and employees for providing this growth that will be the envy of many countries.

In this process, we would like to express our thanks to our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has heard the voice of our business world and stood by us with the support measures they have provided.

In another positive development, we have already surpassed the $184 billion export target for 2021 and continue to work nationwide as the Chamber and Commodity Exchange community to increase our annual exports above $200 billion and thus exceed another historical threshold.

In order to sustain strong growth, we also think that a decrease in loan interest rates and inflation, stability in exchange rates should be achieved and this can be achieved again, as we have done in the past.

In this regard, we believe that our government will continue policies that support the business world, production, investment and the employment market.

On the other hand, we want to continue the support steps for our sectors, especially the service sector, which have been most adversely affected by the pandemic and are not getting enough of the growth.

We expect that the debt payments of the businesses that remain closed will be postponed and that our food and drink sector can be opened with appropriate measures.

We see benefits in continuing withholding and VAT reductions initiated in support of the affected economic activities, which expire on May 31^st, throughout the pandemic.”