14.09.2023 İstanbul
The Turkic World Business Forum was organized by the Union of Turkic Chambers of Commerce and Industry and hosted by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Türkiye (TOBB) in İstanbul.
Speaking at the forum,
M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, President of the Union of Turkic Chambers of Commerce
and Industry and President of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of
Türkiye (TOBB), said that he visits member countries whenever he has the
opportunity and that he is very excited to see the policies and practices
aiming to diversify production and emphasize the private sector in the vision
documents prepared.
Emphasizing that having
natural resources alone is not enough for development, Hisarcıklıoğlu said, “We
must also diversify and develop our economic structure. For this, we must
strengthen entrepreneurship by turning to industry and trade. This is the only
way to make our countries and peoples richer.”
Hisarcıklıoğlu pointed
out that the first step in this process is to increase the volume of trade and
remove obstacles and said, “One of the important issues in trade is customs
crossings. In our geography, land customs gates are of great importance. Thanks
to the approval and support of the Ministry of Trade, as TOBB, we have great
experience and success in renovating and operating them. Our projects have been
recognized as success stories by the United Nations and shown as an example to
the world.
Entrepreneurship is
another issue we care about. By increasing entrepreneurship and developing the
private sector, we have achieved global success in two areas. We have also made
great progress in tourism in the last 30 years. We have become one of the top 5
tourism destinations in the world. We have ranked 2nd in the world
in the overseas contracting sector.
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Türkiye and observer members TRNC, Hungary and
Turkmenistan, which make up the Organization of Turkic States, have an economic
size of approximately 1.3 trillion dollars, a foreign trade volume of 856
billion dollars and a population of 174 million people.”
Stating that these figures
alone show how they can become a great global power when they come together,
Hisarcıklıoğlu said, “In order to mobilize this power, we must first strengthen
the economic integration between us. We must complete bilateral free trade or
preferential trade agreements. Our request to our ministers is to pave the way.
As Türkiye, we have already done this with Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. Free
trade agreements on trade in services and investments should be finalized. We
expect the negotiations on the Partnership Agreement in the field of Digital
Economy to be concluded with a concrete agreement in a short time. We must
first remove trade barriers between our countries and increase trade with each
other.”
Hisarcıklıoğlu
continued: “As a result, we must write an integration success story similar to
the EU. We should direct women and young entrepreneurs. In order to attract
investors to our countries, we need to provide “Arbitration” at international
standards. After we, as Türkiye, introduced the arbitration system, FDI inflow,
which was 1 billion dollars a year, exceeded 10 billion dollars. With this
vision, together with you, we established the Arbitration Center of the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation in İstanbul. We should benefit from this
center together. We should utilize a very important transit point like the
Caspian Sea more actively and less costly. We need to start the construction of
the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline as soon as possible. We are very pleased with
the cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The Russian-Ukrainian war
has shown that the Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan gas pipeline has become even more
important. I see the Organization of Turkic States and our Union as
strategically important steps that will enable us to achieve this goal. Thus,
solidarity between us will increase and new cooperation opportunities will
develop. I believe that if we join hands, if our governments and the business
world work together, the Turkic world will write new success stories.”