Trade Minister Bolat: Sanctions And Sanctions Continue To Be Applied

Commerce Minister Ömer Bolat, who came to Kars for the provincial programs, visited Governor Ziya Polat in his office with AKP Kars MP Adem Çalkın and his entourage, and got information about the works in the city. Bolat, who later became the AKP provincial chairman, held a meeting with party members.

Minister Polat said that the modernized Türkgözü customs gate in Ardahan will be inaugurated tomorrow at the “Meeting of Economic NGOs and Entrepreneurs” at the 18th Regional Road Directorate.

Bolat stated that he will visit 11 provinces together with Kars and Ardahan: “Customs management is a necessity in this border region with Armenia. If there is a permanent peace agreement in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, when we decide as a government to open the borders, I hope that we, as the Ministry of Commerce, will also convince our government. It would be a blessing to open Doğukapı in Kars as a Customs Directorate, let me tell you in advance.” he said.

SUPPORT KARS ARTS

Bolat, who announced that a total of 30 million liras of support will be given to small merchants and artisans in Kars, said that other ministries also have significant investments in Kars and are following them.

Mentioning the issues that they prioritized as a government, Bolat said: “Of course, our priority as a government is the fight against inflation. The public sector has very important reform measures in this regard. The 3-year mid-term MTP program will be announced next week. The new anchor of the Turkish economy will be the medium-term programme. I recommend that everyone follow the program’s mid-term goals, wellness recommendations. There will be forecasts and a roadmap on the goals that Turkey will achieve in three years, including the main macroeconomic indicators.” He used the phrases.

Noting that there was an epidemic of a new type of coronavirus (Kovid-19) before, Bolat stated that Turkey managed the crisis in this process in the best way in the world.

Bolat noted that Turkey has grown despite these and similar negativities:

“It grew 11.4 percent in 2021 and 5.6 percent in 2022. This year, it grew 3.9 percent in the first quarter. According to the data announced by TURKSTAT this morning, our growth rate was 3.8 percent, under what conditions? There is an anti-inflation program, austerity is being attempted, and there is an earthquake that accounts for 45 percent of Turkey’s initial budget for 2023, which requires $104 billion. Under these conditions, Türkiye continues to grow its economy. In this growth, the increase in investment networks has as much effect as the effect of household consumption. At the same time, we, as Plan of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, are making great efforts to increase our exports”.

“WE LOST 8.5 BILLION DOLLARS”

Bolat stated that it is gratifying that Turkey has achieved growth of around 4 percent in this process and continued as follows:

“Compared to January 2020, we created almost 4 million new jobs. We found employment for 4 million people and increased our national income to $906 billion and our per capita income to $10,655. Even in this difficult period we managed to bring our exports last year to 254 billion dollars. This year there has been a serious fall in the prices of raw materials in the world. There is a great regression in the demands of the rich developed countries. Even China’s exports and imports fell between 14 and 17 percent last month. Despite this, we maintain our export level, in the last 12 months we are at the level of 253-254 billion dollars. On Monday we will announce the export figure for August. February was a wasted month. After the earthquake, our exports decreased between 6 and 6.5 billion dollars. Compared to the same month of the previous year, from February to August we lost 2.5 billion dollars in exports in the area of ​​the earthquake that month. In other words, so far we have suffered a loss of 8.5 billion dollars in exports due to the earthquake.

Minister Bolat stated: “We could easily reach our export target of $265 billion due to disasters we would never want to experience. Although world prices have fallen and world exports have stagnated near 0, hopefully we will skip this year. We also expect a great acceleration of our exports next year. Under the slogan “The only way is to increase our exports”, we have the goal of increasing our share of world exports to 1.20 percent in five years. We hope to increase our exports of services to 200 billion dollars in five years”. He used the phrases.

“WE CONTINUE IMPLEMENTING PENALTY”

Emphasizing that they have export objectives in technological and high value-added products, Bolat said:

“We want to have a voice and vote in the export of services in the world. Our goal is to increase the world share to almost 2.5 per cent of services exports. Employment is very important, we continue to find work with our young people, we have to and we have to grow. As the Ministry of Commerce in the domestic market, we are determined not to give space to those who want to accumulate and opportunistically. We continue to impose sanctions, sanctions, and penalties on those who attempt to mislead the consumer between safe and shelf prices. This continues in food markets and in cars all over Turkey, including Kars. As a final word, 2 regulatory changes were published in the official gazette last night. We’ve made a new rule change where we hold advertising sites liable for practices like trying to sell things that aren’t real estate, i.e. real estate and used car sales, under fake names and fake vehicles, and trying to mislead to the consumer, and in case of non-compliance economic sanctions will be applied. Our goal is to ensure that trade is conducted only in a manner that is fair, equitable and does not mislead consumers. The market is not neglected or unregulated, the government and the State were in charge”. (AA)