He stated that the minimum wage creates pressure on the industry and that they have no chance to compete with 850 dollars. In 2024, TIM will mainly focus on big markets such as the USA, China and India.
TIM President Gültepe announced the 2024 targets as 267 billion dollars of goods and 135 billion dollars of service exports. He stated that they will organize 5 delegations to the USA, 3 to China, and 2 each to India and Canada. He stated that a revival in global economies is not expected before the second half of 2023. Gültepe said that some sectors, which had difficulty in keeping prices due to high costs last year, would have difficulty in competing.
Türkiye's total exports increased by 0.6 percent to 255.8 billion dollars, but 13 sectors experienced a decline due to the global demand decline, the TIM president said. He emphasized that market losses were experienced in sectors such as automotive, ready-to-wear clothing and steel. Attributing 20 percent of the market losses to the global demand contraction and 80 percent to the economic policies in Türkiye, he said that a different policy should be followed.
Pointing out that the minimum wage puts pressure on the industry, Gültepe said that successive minimum wage hikes have a negative impact on competitiveness. He also stated that Türkiye's labor costs are higher than EU countries. Gültepe said that there is an expectation of a recovery in the economy, but this depends on the policies of the Turkish Central Bank and the Turkish Ministry of Treasury and Finance.
Gültepe stated that although there are investments in technology and machinery-oriented sectors, labor-intensive sectors have lost their competitiveness and investments tend to flee. He stressed that measures should be taken against the risk of production shifting to neighboring countries.
Finally, he noted that there may be employment losses in labor-intensive sectors in the first quarter of the year and that sectors should be repositioned by adopting a sectoral clustering model.
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