Yesterday, I finished writing a chronological reporting listing the key events of 2018. Things I wrote brought me to the following conclusion:
Turkish economy is currently sustained by 14-15 thousand strong companies. Businesses that produce goods for domestic market don’t have adequate capacity. But, the export capacity luckily shows good export performance. There’s one more interesting issue: Due to the decline in imports volume, containers storing export goods are not coming back to the country. You can’t export anything if you don’t have containers. As you may remember, I’ve already told you about this problem in my previous reports.
We need containers since we are selling heavy goods for low prices. As a matter of fact, we actually might not need a large number of containers if we are to continue to heavy goods for low prices. The same export performance can be achieved with lower cargo tonnage.
Government’s efforts to switch focus from services sector to industrial production a couple of years ago have been deeply appreciated by the public. But I must also indicate that the production wasn’t providing value added output. Lately, Turkish Exporters’ Assembly President Mr. Gülle and I have been focusing our efforts to solve this problem. Our motto is “A New Turkey that runs foreign trade surplus”.,
“Do I see an unidentified object approaching us?”
People keep asking me, “What will CBRT do about interest rates?” Mahfi Eğilmez and I were asked the same question on Wednesday Talks at Altınbaş University. We simply told the audience that cost of funds will rise as a result of the Impact of a Fed interest rate hike. Banks will not decrease credit interest rates because of high cost of funds. So, Turkey will have to face a high-cost production infrastructure.
Professor Eğilmez and I had a mutual warning: “You shouldn’t get used to it! If you get used to it, high-cost production will directly impact the prices. Necessary measures must be taken before Turkey gets drowned in high-inflation, high-turnover yet low-profit economy.
At Turkish Organized Industrial Zones Common Wisdom Meetings I moderated this year, I witnessed people mostly talk about the need for the improvement of “Vocational High Schools”. But the people who ask for such improvement do not want their own children to attend vocational high schools. There’s a big difference between what they say and what they do.
According to the OECD reports, twenty years from now, 60 percent of occupations in Turkey could be automated. I guess younger people could be right as they want waste neither time nor energy on careers that will disappear in the next 20 years.
Apparently, we are going through an era where businesses processes and occupations are gradually transforming while a new reflex of taking position based on Current Global Conjuncture begins dominating all sectors, even the administration. I believe that visionary companies with strong network and connections will manage to survive this process.
