03.05.2018 Ankara

TOBB President Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu gave his assessment regarding the international credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgrading of Turkey’s credit grade.

Hisarcıklıoğlu's statement is as follows:

“We believe that the international credit rating agency S&P’s decision of lowering Turkey's credit rating to BB- to be a results of incomplete information and incorrect assessment.

Turkey's economy has shown high growth as well as increases in employment and export in 2017, revealing its strong and robust structure.

Therefore, this decision reflects the status of Turkey's economy in an incomplete and incorrect manner.

As the Turkish business community, the best answer to this will be to disregard this unfair assessment and continuing to increase our economic activity, without being misled by all negativity.

I believe that we will show how erroneous all credit rating agencies have been with the 2018 first quarter economic growth rate which will be announced in approximately 1.5 months.

Our expectation and our goal is to achieve over 7% growth in the economy in the first quarter of this year.

Thus, Turkey will invalidate the guesses of those with negative expectations once more.

We will once again prove how dynamic and productive Turkey is, giving a very strong message to the whole world.”