President Erdoğan: We have worked for the total growth of our country with a cumulative approach without excluding any sector
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a speech at the 4th Conference of Commercial Counsellors at the Presidential Complex.
These conferences bring together counsellors from 131 centers in 110 different countries, President Erdoğan noted, saying: “These meetings offer an opportunity for all the stakeholders, who contribute to enhancing our international trade, to come together. They, therefore, enable coordination among our relevant institutions for drafting the policies in foreign trade and determining necessary steps as well as for dealing with the problems encountered along the process.”
“WE HAVE WORKED FOR THE TOTAL GROWTH OF OUR COUNTRY”
“We, as Turkey, have achieved reforms and records of historic proportions in almost every area over the past 17 years,” President Erdoğan underlined, and stated: “We have never neglected healthcare while focusing on education or never neglected agriculture, tourism or manufacture while putting emphasis on transport. We have worked for the total growth of our country with a cumulative approach without excluding any sector. It is not only the prosperity of our industrialists that has increased over the past 17 years. The resources and means of our laborers, farmers, public servants and tradesmen have also enhanced.”
Further stressing that a significant change of paradigm has also taken place in the meantime, President Erdoğan said: “We have attached special importance to regions like Africa and Latin America with which we had had very limited relations previously. Thanks to our policies of opening towards Africa and Latin America, we have both broken entrenched perceptions in some of our state institutions and changed prejudices within our society regarding these regions.”
“WE HAVE TAKEN CARE OF THE ISSUES OF ALL OF OUR BUSINESSPEOPLE AND THEIR BUSINESSES”
Emphasizing that they have taken care of the issues of all of our businesspeople and their businesses, small and large alike, President Erdoğan added: “We, as the state, make our presence felt abroad not only with our diplomats and attachés. We have been carrying out very important works in various areas through TIKA, Yunus Emre Institutes, AFAD, YTB, Anadolu Agency, Turkish Airlines, DEIK and the Maarif Foundation.”
The changes witnessed in the export, tourism and investment figures of our country over the past 17 years attest to the distance our country has covered, President Erdoğan stated, and continued: “Our exports have increased from $36 billion in 2002 to $168 billion in 2018. In the same period, Turkey achieved a significant growth rate of 5.6%. We ended last year with an important growth rate of 2.6% despite the speculations in August.”
