We Cannot Achieve Our Goals Without Regaining Our Competitiveness

We have left behind a busy June in terms of our exports and exporters. On the last day of June, with the participation of our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, we presented awards to the top 1,000 companies that contributed the most to our 2024 target of $377 billion in goods and services exports. Immediately thereafter, we held the 32nd General Assembly of the Türkiye Exporters' Assembly. The laudatory remarks of our President regarding the Türkiye Exporters' Assembly and our exporters filled us all with pride.

We shared the June export figures with the public at our Foreign Trade Complex together with our Minister of Trade, Ömer Bolat. In June, we achieved exports amounting to $20.5 billion, marking an 8% increase. In the first half of the year, our total exports reached $131.4 billion, while our annualized exports climbed to $267 billion. We recorded a 4.1% increase in six-month exports and a 3.2% rise in twelve-month exports.

Despite global uncertainties and the weakening of our competitiveness, we may regard the fact that we concluded the first half of the year with positive results and that we reached $267 billion in annualized exports for the first time as an achievement. However, I must underscore that we have fallen short of our target over the past two and a half years, as we are unable to meet price expectations in many sectors. When we fail to meet prices, we lose both customers and markets. Nearly half of our 26 goods-exporting sectors report negative figures almost every month, while the increase in exports continues with the contribution of only a few sectors. As I emphasized during the meeting where we announced the June figures, we must not normalize this situation. We must collectively foster an environment in which all our sectors contribute positively to exports.

This is because we aim to achieve $375 billion in goods exports and $200 billion in services exports by 2028. In the long term, we aspire to position Türkiye among the world's top 10 exporting countries. To attain our medium- and long-term objectives, we must increase our exports by at least 10% annually.

We are aware that the loss of momentum has been driven more by the decoupling between input costs and exchange rates in our country than by global uncertainties. Between May 2022 and May 2025, the minimum wage increased by 420%, the Consumer Price Index rose by 232%, while the appreciation in the US dollar exchange rate remained at 148%. This picture clearly illustrates the cause of our diminished competitiveness.

To grow our exports at the desired pace, access to financing under favorable conditions is essential. In this context, enhancing foreign exchange conversion support, reducing interest rates on rediscount loans, increasing credit limits, and implementing new projects that enable our companies to access long-term, low-interest financing are of critical importance.

While we strive to resolve our cyclical problems on one hand, we are also formulating strategies to future-proof our exports and putting our policies into action. With the goal of increasing added value, we are focusing on high technology, R&D, innovation, design, and twin transformation.

We are also exerting considerable effort to enhance our market diversification. In 2024, we participated in approximately 350 trade fairs and organized 135 trade delegation programs. This year, we will attend around 400 fairs and arrange 158 delegation programs. Once again, I invite our companies to follow our fair and delegation programs more closely and to participate in those that are suitable for them.