Four airlines among Turkey’s top 10 service exporters

ISTANBUL

DHA photo

Turkish Airlines and Pegasus Airlines were named Turkey’s top service exporters, followed by Çalık Energy, in a competition by the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly (TİM) in coordination with the Economy Ministry late on Dec. 24 in an award ceremony. There were two other Turkish carriers in the top 10 list too. 

Sun Express, Gap Construction, Atlas Global, Yapı Merkezi, Netlog Logistics, Odeon Tourism and Taha Cargo followed the first three. Doğan TV was announced the top exporter in the visual and audial services sector. 

Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said the services/business sector is a “work of reason,” adding that Turkey needed to make progress in the sector, in a speech at the award ceremony. 

Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said the government would continue to offer incentives to all export sectors. 

“It is not enough for us to make $150 billion worth of exports in goods, we need to do more. We must change our method. We want to achieve key successes in 2017 with our mobilization movements. This will also enable the services sector to boost its exports,” he said, adding that export subsidies were recently tripled. 

TİM President Mehmet Büyükekşi said the aim of the competition was to make a contribution to Turkey on its road to reaching its $150 billion services export target by 2023. 

“The world’s services trade doubled and hit $4.9 trillion in the last decade. Our country’s services exports marked $46.3 billion in 2015. I must add that Turkey became a net exporter in this field by posting $24 billion surplus, especially in the fields of tourism, transportation and construction sectors,” he said, adding that the top 500 companies in the list made $18.5 billion exports in total, making that 40 percent of the country’s total services exports. 

He also noted that 2017 was announced as “progress” year after a number of key incentives were offered by authorities, such as a considerable rise in the export incentives and a revision in the structure of the Credit Guarantee Fund on the behalf of exporters.