Experts are making recommendations for a Cabinet Urgent Action Plan. Lucky us if the Government is actually taking those into account. Contrary to the general tendency of other experts, I wrote down for you the items requiring urgent handling in not 100, but 30 days:
- Central Bank should avoid futher increasing cost of funds and ease the liquidity crunch in a controlled manner. Central Bank should demand reasonable collaterals for funding
- In order to maintain or increase Turkey’s share in export markets, more facilities should be provided to EXIMBANK. Bureaucracy should be reduced to help exports have easier access to Eximbank credits.
- VAT refund is a major problem in Turkey. A protocole between public and private banks and the Ministry of Finance and Treasury should be signed to provide business people with financing facilities so as to enable them to receive their approved VAT refund.
- Additional customs duties levied upon imports since 2014 tend to boost inflation. Protectionist tendencies should be reduced. It is also strongly advisable to impose selective additonal customs duties on imports.
- There is a big disruption in agricultural market: a presence of a monoply and oligopoly abusing both producers and consumers, causing further increase in inflation. Proactive measures should be taken to control price formation in agricultural products, prevent monopoly selling and buying powers and to implement a long-term harvesting plan.
- Indirect tax revision is urgently needed. VAT and Special Consumption Tax (SCT) rates on inelastic items (vital consumer goods) should be reduced. We need a more effective regulatory reform than the recently implemented model for taxation in fuel.
- In order for growth can remain above 5% over the upcoming period, Government should provide easy terms of collateral or guarantee/caution templates to companies investing in “additional capacity”.
- The Banks Association of Turkey should urgently put a consumer debt restructuring project into effect in cooperation with other related associations. An effective interest rate ceiling must be set up. And this ceiling shall apply to all persons, including the ones who are dealing with administrative as well as legal proceedings for debt recovery.
- Urgent regulation is needed to offer settlement for the repayment of tax installments, thus helping ease pressure on liquidity. A debt settlement offer from the Administration to the Business World should apply to all state institutions and organizations, thus stopping interest rates from continuing to rise by reducing business world’s demand for liquidity.
Et voilà! I can almost hear some of you ask, “Why 9 recommendations, instead of 10?” Because, I am not in the habit of making up items just to round up numbers. Anyway, that’s all from me. I just hope they will serve the best interests of our country.
