Our Exporters Passed The Great Exam With Success

As we entered the New Year, we knew that a difficult market awaited us in the first half of the year. We made all our plans accordingly and determined our goals to that extent. In the first quarter of the year, our exporters had a difficult time with the deepening recession in our largest export markets, the banking crisis and the great earthquake we experienced. However, the magnitude of the economic damage caused by the earthquake disaster we experienced in February contained the following message for us: We cannot afford to lose hope and revise our targets because of the earthquake.

For this reason, while trying to heal the wounds of earthquake victims, we also worked to continue production and exports. Production is of strategic importance for the normalization of life in earthquake zones and for the country's economy. For this reason, we took quick steps to start the wheels turning again in 11 provinces affected by the earthquake, which count for 10% share in our total exports. We conveyed the demands of the producers in the region to the relevant ministries and asked for a solution. We accelerated the work on our 1,000 containers and prefabricated housing projects. In a short time, we will start the placement of earthquake victims in the houses.

Although we lost blood in exports in February, we did not lose hope and continued to look for new markets all over the world. Together with our exporters' associations, we organized more than 15 Buying Missions and Trade Delegations all over the world in March alone, and these delegations continue to increase. We aim to complete the year with 100 Trade Delegations. In addition, we will hopefully host 45 Buying Missions in our country by the end of the year.

Although the storm in global trade is getting worse with the banking crisis that started in the USA, we see that there is a great potential for our country in our trade delegations. I would like to reiterate my call to all our companies to 'join trade delegations'. Because every successful step to be taken in export will help to heal our wounds.

Our performance in March was very important and our exporter successfully passed this big test. Despite the disaster of the century, the fact that we increased our exports compared to the same month of the previous year gave confidence to foreign buyers. Despite everything, we showed once again that we have the ability to produce.

We turned an important corner in the first quarter. As exporters, all we want is for the exchange rate policy to support producers and exporters so that we can reach or even exceed the target we set for the end of 2023. We are aware that our exporters have difficulties in protecting the existing markets, and we persistently convey this issue to the relevant institutions.

For our export target of more than 300 billion dollars, we must find new markets and while doing this, we must not lose existing markets.

We can achieve this with an exchange rate policy that will support exports, not imports.