Chinese no longer depend on their “cheaper manufacturing” motto. Although digital transformation is pretty effective in terms of bringing more value added, conventional manufacturing will suffer a lot during this transition. The fact that China’s president has allowed to remain president for life during the process so as to avoid any political turmoil doesn’t go unnoticed either. From this point of view, we could say that Turkey is likely to face major risk. Turkey’s current economic model will not allow Turkish economy to continue to be a member of the G20 in the future unless we integrate digital transformation into the process as soon as possible.
Turkey must open its eyes and realize that China is currently going through a process of big change, thus develop a brand international trade strategy.
Given the fact that a slowdown in the US economy would directly affect EU, Turkey will have to face an avoidable risk involving its export markets. So, we should better start taking preventive steps unless we want to say farewell to European market.
It’s just not possible to create a new Turkey running large trade surpluses without increasing the value of Turkey’s exports in U.S. dollar per kilogram. We need a new growth model that could help us have access to universal values without losing our identity. First thing to do is to ensure that all institutions and organisations in Turkey are well-equipped with export-oriented strategies.
“We have to change our habits….”
It can be foreseen that firms whose only less than 30% of their total income consists of foreign currency will struggle greatly in 2019. Therefore, government should start taking actions to help firms increase their export rates and make the necessary efforts to maintain their positions in current markets as well as to look for new ones.
From now on, all of the Turkish firms must start being equipped with export-oriented strategies. In fact, they must become strong enough to earn foreign currency equal to 50% of their total revenue. Producers of intermediate goods should absolutely be provided with government support as they are our most important exporting items.
Turkey should make efforts to create strong firms that are able to engage in international competition, giving up the approach based on sustaining government-backed firms. From now on, Turkish Exporters’ Assembly should adopt a strategy of granting saying to firms based on their export ratio, which means, the more firms engage in exporting activities, the more they should have more saying in the design of Export Strategies. Government should eliminate the hegemony of firms whose export performance is less than 30% of their total revenue over the sectors as well as the lobbying activities and approaches that make us the citizens and industrialists pay the price because of high export taxes.
In short, we need a brand new approach that is capable of using trade diplomacy in foreign politics as a catalyst while increasing goods and services export performance. I also expect that Turkish Exporters’ Assembly executive team to enhance ties with the Banks Association of Turkey and Non-Bank Financial Institutions in order for Financial Institutions can be more open to Turkey’s new vision.
