MÜSİAD President Abdurrahman Kaan evaluated the full-year and fourth-quarter growth figures announced by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

MÜSİAD President Abdurrahman Kaan's written statement regarding the full-year and fourth-quarter growth figures announced by TÜİK is as follows:

Covid-19, the most challenging economic period in recent history, created an environment of uncertainty throughout 2020, incomparable to any crisis the global economy has experienced before. As we recall, the global economy faced the Gulf Wars in the 1990s; the September 11th attacks, the Iraq War, and finally the 2008 Financial Crisis in the 2000s; and Brexit and Trade Wars in the 2010s. Thus, the 2020s began with the Covid-19 crisis. During this period, the global system experienced a major shock on both the supply and demand fronts. The movement of capital, goods, and people had almost ground to a halt.

In such challenging times, we consider the Turkish economy's continued positive growth trend, achieving 1.8% growth throughout the year, a commendable performance. Furthermore, with 5.9% growth in the last quarter of the year, the Turkish economy, along with China, was the only G20 country to achieve positive growth throughout 2020 and is among the countries that emerged from this challenging period with minimal damage.

Of course, we have a long and challenging road ahead for this growth performance to be sustainable. During this period, we must maintain the vibrancy of economic activity by vigilantly combating Covid-19. As MÜSİAD, we believe that in the coming period, we must surpass the efforts we have made so far in the production-trade-investment triangle.

In this context, we welcome the 8.2% increase in household consumption and the 10.3% expansion in investments observed in the last quarter of the year. However, we reiterate that we must prioritize export-oriented manufacturing production to ensure that net foreign demand contributes more to growth in 2021.

We expect the industrial sector, which expanded by 10.3% in the last quarter of the year, and the manufacturing industry, which grew by 10.5%, to continue to drive growth in 2021. As we have repeatedly emphasized, Turkey, a candidate for a major production hub, has the greatest advantage compared to its peers: its existing manufacturing potential and flexible production capacity. With this potential, we believe that our country will maintain its positive growth performance in 2021 and beyond, driven by aligned monetary and fiscal policies.