Stronger ICI, Stronger Industry with 70 Years of Experience

• 02.06.2022
• Archive

This is a very important year for us, for the Istanbul Chamber of Industry (ICI). We are celebrating our 70th anniversary. Founded in 1952, when our country’s industry was just beginning to take off, our chamber has witnessed the development and expansion of both our economy and industrial production. In fact, it was more than "just witnessing". The Istanbul Chamber of Industry and its member industrialists played an important role in the construction of almost all the building blocks of Türkiye's recent industrialization process.

Over the years, valuable work and efforts have been exhibited. All of it was for the growth of our country's economy... for the strengthening of the production economy... for employment... for making the strongest contribution to industrialization on the path to a prosperous society.

Today, we continue with that mission and vision. At our every Assembly meeting, we are looking for answers to the question of "How do we further develop our country?" along with all our industrialists. Today, where consumption is, unfortunately, more prominent, we try to explain to society the motto: "It's more valuable to get credit for production, not consumption."

And that was what we talked about with a very important guest at our assembly meeting held in May. We discussed the indispensable value of quality production and human capital for a country. "70 years of ICI: Yesterday, Today and the Future. Prof. Dr. Ufuk Akçiğit from the University of Chicago Economics Department attended our Assembly meeting held with the agenda of "Evaluations for More Qualified Production and Competitive Industry". His following words are of great importance: “If financial resources are not used properly, this can be remedied within a few years by taking the appropriate measures. However, if human capital is mismanaged, a whole generation will be lost."

We had an important event last month. Together with SAHA Istanbul, we organized the fourth of the “ICI Defense Industry Meetings”. Now a tradition, these meetings are attracting great interest from our industrialists. Prof. Dr. İsmail Demir, President of the Presidency of the Turkish Defence Industry, also attended and delivered a speech at the meeting. You can find the details of the symposium and bilateral meetings of the meeting on the following pages.

The month of May offers a unique type of excitement to us. It is because we are announcing the "ICI Türkiye's Top 500 Industrial Enterprises" survey. Thanks to the devoted efforts of our Economic Research Department and consultants, we were able to announce the ICI 500 this year, even on the last day of May. As every year, the ICI 500 is saying a great deal to the economic society waiting for the results in anticipation. In this issue, you can find the summary results of the survey, which covers extremely striking data on the activities of industrial companies for the previous year.

I wish you all a happy month...

Erdal Bahçıvan
Istanbul Chamber of Industry
Chairman