Financial Conditions Should Be Improved, R&D Should Be Focused for High Quality Growth

• 24.09.2019
• Archive

We witnessed two significant developments for our economy in September. The first was the announcement of the growth data of second quarter of 2019. The second was the reduction in one-week repo auction interest rate from 24 percent to 19.75 percent in July by the Central Bank Monetary Policy Committee which was followed by a reduction in the interest rates by 3.25 basis points to 16.50 in September.

If I need to address to two topics briefly, The GDP data that belong to the second quarter of the year puts forward that the positive growth in our economy will be delayed a little longer as we enter this year which was quite contrary to our expectations. We are not in the desired point in terms of turning the manufacturing industry positive especially. Because the financial situations have not recovered in an adequate level in today’s world and growth is also at a very weak point accordingly. I would like to mention about the significance and value of the second interest reduction applied by the Central Bank after July once again. Since the most important negative factor of the economic activity in terms of our real sector and industry is the high interests. Therefore, we expect these decisions to reflect on our markets and real sector at the same rate.

The first place which gives birth to the technological innovation in an industry is the R&D cells of companies. Each innovation and innovation energy put forward in such cells embraces and warms firstly the department and company and the whole industry, market and final consumer at the end like a net. The driving force and motto of modern economies to renew themselves, to rise in the competition index and to create the highest level of added value for the country's economy is: R&D...

Unfortunately, it is not possible to state that we are in a satisfactory point as a country in R&D which we have prepared a detailed file in this issue. However, our awareness in this regard is increasing year by year. The year-long special focus, the incentives and motivating directions of T.R Ministry of Industry and Technology have a great impact for this fact.

We follow it in a tangible way in the results of our reports during the recent years as one of the most attention-grabbing positive indicators of our ICI 500 Top research. As you will read on the following pages, one of the most significant outputs of ICI 500 Top report which we seized the opportunity to analyze with our esteemed guests at the last Assembly meeting were the results regarding the R&D. According to such results, we observe promising increases in R&D expenses of companies as well as the number of companies engaged in R&D compared to the past years.

As ICI, we have employees to strengthen the awareness of R&D as well. We try to guide our members for years with our R&D department we established. You can read the information in our R&D file, varying from all dimensions, from both this service and how an R&D department can be established, to the incentives provided in this field and how to apply for these incentives.

Erdal Bahçıvan
Istanbul Chamber of Industry
Chairman