Turkey to expand its industrial capacity: Minister

ANKARA

Turkey under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will establish a new executive industrialization committee to make the country an essential player of global competition by expanding its capacity, the Turkish industry and technology minister said on Oct. 14.

“We have taken a historical step to strengthen the Turkish industry and technology ecosystem, and the most critical structural reform of the recent period has been made,” Mustafa Varank said at an event in Ankara.

In this committee, the decisions, which will improve the industry, will be taken together with the relevant ministries, he said.

The committee will ease the control of public procurements in line with the indigenous production priorities, the minister also noted.

Separately, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said that Turkey will enter a new period “in every field of the economy including exports, industry and manufacture” with the new economic program targets announced on Sept. 29.

“In the first 13 days of October, the export-to-import coverage ratio rose to 92.1 percent. Excluding gold the ratio was 101.8 percent,” he said in a tweet.

“For a strong economy, we will uplift these figures,” he added.

According to an infographic shared by Albayrak, Turkey’s total exports reached $6.9 billion between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13, while imports totaled $7.5 billion.

The export-to-import coverage ratio - excluding gold imports - was around 90.9 in September and 84.4 percent in the first nine months.