Turkish government launches campaign to boost employment

ANKARA

The Turkish government has launched a new campaign to increase employment rate by supporting businesses, Turkey’s family, labor and social services minister said on Feb. 25.

“As a state, we pay salaries, taxes and premiums of every new personnel employed by businesses for three months,” Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk said at an event in the capital Ankara.

The minister added that the government will continue to pay personnel’s taxes and premiums for the following nine months.

Meanwhile, Finance and Treasury Mnisiter Berat Albayrak said: “Within the scope of employment-intensive policies, Turkey has created over 10 million jobs since 2009.”

The Turkish economy started a new era and the country will enter stronger and more positive process after local elections, he underlined.

Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, the president of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB), said that the union has started a campaign to raise employment.

People who invested in the Turkish economy and generate employment will succeed, he added.

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), the country’s unemployment rate was 12.3 percent as of November 2018.

The number of unemployed persons — aged 15 years and over — totaled 3.98 million, as the number of employed people was 28.3 million.

As noted in Turkey’s new economic program, which was announced in September 2018, the country aims to reach an unemployment rate target of 10.8 percent in 2021.

[HH] New package for SMEs

Albayrak also noted that the government will unveil a new package to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

“A new package is on the way. We will announce it this week,” Albayrak said.

He reminded that in January the government announced a 20 billion Turkish Lira loan package with contribution from 13 banks for the SMEs.

“Under this scheme, 67,438 SMEs have taken out loans worth 20.3 billion liras which helped those companies meet their liquidity needs,” he said.