Turkey Sells Products to the World but Its Exports to The U.S. Market Decreasing

August 5, 2010
Written by Admin TOA
Published in Latest

Turkish Trade Minister Zafer Caglayan with Omer Guner, TURKOFAMERICA's General Manager.

Turkey’s Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan, who spoke to TURKOFAMERICA magazine about the trade issues between the two countries, said “We are carrying out our activities both through state-wide private sectors and through the federal government in order to gain more benefits from exports, and we will continue these efforts with the same momentum.” Çağlayan told TURKOFAMERICA about Turkey’s export strategy:

When we look at the developments in our economic relations with the USA, we see that since the year 2000 the rate of our exports to the US has been steadily decreasing. While Turkey's overall exports between the years of 2000 and 2009 have increased 267.8 percent, its exports to the US increased only 3 percent.

Turkey's exports to the US was once 11.2 percent of its total exports, but this percentage decreased to 3.1 in 2009. Turkey's Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan, who spoke to TURKOFAMERICA magazine about the trade issues between the two countries, said "We are carrying out our activities both through state-wide private sectors and through the federal government in order to gain more benefits from exports, and we will continue these efforts with the same momentum." Çağlayan told TURKOFAMERICA about Turkey's export strategy: What is the importance of the North American market for Turkey's strategy:

The strategy that was adopted by all countries as one of the best ways to get out of the global crisis was to export and gain more through global grade. In order to eliminate the likely negative impacts of the crisis on our country, we are also following a similar method and trying to continue our efforts to both increase the number of our export partners, as well as to make our export potential more competitive and concentrated on value-added production. We have great goals with regards to our exports and these goals are not necessaryly in accordance with contemporary situation; they are based on a 13 year project plan. For the time being, we are working on our plans for the year 2023 and we are receiving all of the information and support that we need for these efforts from those that we export to; they are our main partners and we are all preparing our action plans together.

If we take into consideration the possibility of competitor countries having similar goals, what would need to be done until the designated year 2023?
When the world economy goes into a steady growth period in the future, there will be both new opportunities and threats for our country, but it is certain that the situation in the future will be a lot more challenging than now. More countries will be into exporting. On the other hand, developing countries and the rising economies will be our competitors, as well as markets for us. There is no doubt that when we take into account all of these improvements, in addition to the need to maintain the current export markets while continuing our efforts, every year in a disciplined manner, towards reaching our goal of $500 billion export value, we must also try to find out about the markets that have not been discovered by our exporters and increase our exports of new products.