Cooling push risks freezing: Business body

ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency

A Turkish aid ship enters a Somali port in this file photo. Meral (inset) says businessmen should also focus on the continent. Hürriyet photo

Slowing Turkey’s economy down further could result in it freezing, according to the president of the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (TUSKON).

“It’s very difficult to thaw a frozen economy,” Rızanur Meral recently told Anatolia news agency. 
Meral said the government’s efforts to slow the economy had been fruitful but that there was no longer any need to cool it down. 

“On the contrary, we need right now to loosen the belts a bit and the business world needs to have more comfortable access to liquidity,” he said That’s why I think that the economic management needs to be a bit more tolerant.” 

According to Meral, the government’s new law regarding bad checks is one of the biggest obstacles facing the 4 percent growth target and the 3.2 percent growth figure for the first quarter of 2012. Doing away with prison time for writing bad checks has led to a slowdown in growth, he said, adding that the retail sector had only reached a measly 0.9 percent. 

If Turkey wants to reach its 2023 export targets, it needs to foster more exporters and increase its international recognition, the TUSKON head said.

“We’ve also begun using the term businesspeople instead of businessmen because we realized we are being unfair to women,” Meral said. “Every year the number of female entrepreneurs in Turkey goes up. On our board alone there are eight women managers this year.”