Speaking at the “Export Champions Award Ceremony” held at the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) complex and hosted by Uludağ Automotive Industry Exporters Association (OİB) Chairman Kemal Yazıcı, Trade Minister Bolat said that almost six years have passed since the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic, but the global economy has not yet been on a stable growth path and many countries have turned to protectionist economic policies in the process.
Bolat emphasized that this situation leads to trade wars, saying:
“As you know, a China storm is blowing in the world. With the change of governments, trade wars began. Especially in the West, the protectionist trade winds of the USA also affected the European Union. While the situation in the world is like this, thank God in Turkey. Our economic growth continued, even in 2020, the year of Covid-19. In this sense, we achieved an average annual growth of 5.4 percent by the end of 2025.”
Stating that Türkiye's economic growth has increased positively in the last 23 quarters, Bolat said: “We have reached an economy of 1 trillion 640 billion dollars. As for employment, we have managed to reduce the unemployment rate to single digits in the last 36 to 37 months in history and the third highest monthly figure in history.” he said.
Bolat explained that in the first six months of this year, exports increased by 3.6 percent to $136 billion and imports increased by 4.6 percent to $189 billion:
“We ended the first half of the year with a deficit of around $53 billion. If we look at the data for the last 12 months as of the end of June, our merchandise exports increased by 4.1 percent to $278 billion. This means that in December last year, which we closed at $273.3 billion, we increased by $4.7 billion after the 12-month figure, reaching $278 billion. We only need an increase of Reach $4 billion.” Hopefully we will also achieve our year-end target of $282 billion. On the other hand, if we include service exports, we reached $400.3 billion at the end of June.
“The automotive industry is the pride of the Turkish manufacturing sector on the world stage”
Stating that the automotive industry has maintained its export leadership for the past 19 years, Minister Ömer Bolat said: “The automotive industry, which has been the champion in 19 of the last 20 years, has achieved the pride of Turkish industry and the Turkish manufacturing sector on the world stage. This success has been accompanied by quality, on-time delivery, reliability, sustainability and qualified human resources. Of course, it is thanks to the fact that our government has managed to grow the Turkish economy regularly and steadily over the past 23 years to grow.” and the increase in national income has also had a positive impact on the automobile industry.” he said.
Bolat emphasized that the automotive sector is the leading sector, with an export success of $41.5 billion last year, and continued:
“This sector of ours is the fifth largest sector in Europe in its field. We have reached the 13th largest production base in the world in the automotive sector. We are the 5th in Europe and the 13th in the world. The sector had an export share of over 15 percent of Türkiye's $273 billion exports last year. Turkey is among the world giants in the bus and light commercial vehicle segment. According to our 2025 production figures in production of light commercial vehicles, we are.” 9th in the world: “We are 1st in Europe and 4th in the world in bus production.” These are really important achievements. Turkey is the fifth largest automotive location in Europe and the 13th in the world for passenger car production.”
Bolat emphasized that it was an ecosystem success, particularly driven by the electronics, steel, machinery and software sectors.
Bolat explained that the sectors integrated with the automobile industry contributed to this success: “Innovation, clear vision, determination and a determined fight have brought this success to the automobile industry. The main automobile industry has achieved an export success of around 25 billion dollars out of 41.5 billion dollars. for a total of around 21 billion dollars.” he said.
“We are making intensive use of our export support budget of 45 billion lira”
In his speech, Minister Bolat also touched on support for the automotive sector and provided the following information on the funds and activities implemented in this context:
“We have established the OİBVenture Mobility Innovation Fund. The Turkey Development Fund is also a partner. In addition, the Mobility Innovation Fund supports extremely young entrepreneurs, companies with innovative initiatives and projects. It is an important project that gives them life and helps them develop and hopefully become medium and large companies. After a few years, I hope that we will all see these seeds bear fruit. In addition, as the Ministry of Commerce, we will our Use the 45 billion lira export support budget for this.” year to support our exporters. “We use it extensively in the automotive industry. We support 30 brands of our 29 companies under the Turquality program and 13 brands of our 13 companies under the brand program. In addition, our association has a new Turquality funding project entitled “Promoting the Turkish automotive industry in the new mobility ecosystem.” We also intensively support lobbying on the topic of “Made in EU” in the European Union.”
At the Export Champions Award Ceremony, last year's export champion Ford Automotive and the 133 companies that exported the most were presented with awards in the Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze categories.
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