TR Economy & Updates

[Heartbang]

I dont see how simsek can save the economy tbh

Him "saving" the economy is to pay the imperialist toll enacted upon us on a semi-regular basis. I just hope this will be our last.

Turkiye needs to enact those structural reforms in the short term, in order to weatherproof her economy. And then we must establish an "economic warfare infrastructure" to turn the tide and slap some fools!

 

[Bozan]

Can he fix it

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1684318012747272192

 

[B_A]

I wonder why we have so large trade deficit.
Any industrialized developing countries such as tayland or Vietnam or Malaysia didnt had trade deficit like it.

 

[Heartbang]

I wonder why we have so large trade deficit.
Any industrialized developing countries such as tayland or Vietnam or Malaysia didnt had trade deficit like it.

No hydrocarbons. It would be easier if we had hydrocarbons.

That's why we gotta have (East-Med) hydrocarbons.

 

[Shtr]

It exactly is.


BTW CB increased the forecasted inflation by this year's end to %58 and no single-digit inflation is in sight. IMHO I don't think we can achieve single-digit inflation before 2026. As I said before I doubt there will be a significant improvement in the short to medium term.

This calculation in the articale is completely wrong.

The true calculation is that Vatandaş will receive not both. He will take only one. Interest or Fixed dollar value. Not both.

 

[I_Love_F16]

No hydrocarbons. It would be easier if we had hydrocarbons.

That's why we gotta have (East-Med) hydrocarbons.

Many countries that have better economy than Turkiye doesn't have hydrocarbons either. Like some members posted above, Turkiye need to produce more value added products, especially high tech goods. Limit your imports and prioritize local production as much as possible instead.

 

[Agha Sher]

I wonder why we have so large trade deficit.
Any industrialized developing countries such as tayland or Vietnam or Malaysia didnt had trade deficit like it.

Turkiye had for far too long a strong currency. This made imports cheap and exports expensive. There was no incentive to produce goods in Turkiye and the Turkish people enjoyed materialistic imports beyond their true wealth.

Turkiye is currently going through a hard reset to end the chronic trade deficit

 

[Heartbang]

Many countries that have better economy than Turkiye doesn't have hydrocarbons either. Like some members posted above, Turkiye need to produce more value added products, especially high tech goods. Limit your imports and prioritize local production as much as possible instead.

To reliably develop your industrial base to achieve that, you gotta have hydrocarbons. Which those countries had in spades thanks to this hack they implemented called "imperialism"

 

[No Name]

I wonder why we have so large trade deficit.
Any industrialized developing countries such as tayland or Vietnam or Malaysia didnt had trade deficit like it.

There are several reasons for that:

The first reason is all of those countries have oil and gas reserves Thailand produced 11.6 million metric tons of oil in 2022, Vietnam produced 10.84 million tonnes in 2022, and finally Malaysia produced two million tons of oil. Turkey only produced 3 million tons of oil and used 30 million tons last year, this means that Turkey going to continue to suffer from a trade deficit unless it changes its energy strategy.

Turkey needs to follow the example of states like France, South Korea, and Japan and start to invest heavily in nuclear power. The three countries mentioned do not have any oil reverse of their own but have been able to overcome that disadvantage by investing in nuclear power in order to keep money in the country. Turkey has not only failed to build its nuclear power plant, which was something that Turkey should have done back in the 1980s, but Turkey has screwed up its current nuclear program.

The objective of Nuclear power plants is to achieve energy independence, but Turkey has stupidly set up its nuclear power plant program in a manner that makes it trapped in a system that requires it to keep paying money to a foreign company.

Turkey's decision to be the only country in the world that uses the build–own–operate nuclear power plant model means that the nuclear power plant is owned by a Rosatom subsidiary. the fact that the plant is owned by a subsidiary of a Russian company means that money is transferred outside of Turkey back to Russia; thus continuing the trade deficit for many years to come.

The second reason behind the trade deficit is the Turkish people's habit of seeing gold as an investment winning out over better investment choices that would actually help the economy by putting worth into it.

The preference of Turks to invest in gold creates an environment that increases the trade deficit without adding any value to the Turkish economy. Gold is only valuable because people put a value on it without that sense of value you quickly realize it is a useless metal. Gold doesn't generate any worth to the economy unless you do it, yet many Turks prefer investing in gold over stocks of companies that generate profit and add value.


the Third reason is that Turkish companies proffer to be part of a supply chain for bigger brands rather than rock the boat by making their own brand. The problem with this system is that it creates two big problems the first is that the foreign brands will get most of the profit while the Turkish companies will get the scraps. The second problem is that as soon as wages go up or a new cheaper labour force opens up those brands will which their supply chains to those newer, cheaper labour markets. This happened to Turkey in the mid to late 90s with China slowly eating away at Turkey's share of the low-mid technology market.

The refusal of Turkish companies to establish brands and risk-averse behaviour in entering the high-tech market has led the government to keep adopting policies that favour these cheap labour low to mid-tech companies at the expense of everyone else that lives in Turkey.

 

[TheInsider]

Here is the good news CDS is decreasing and now it is under the 400 threshold. We will live with inflation but at least we won't default.

 

[Lool]

Here is the good news CDS is decreasing and now it is under the 400 threshold. We will live with inflation but at least we won't default.

Probably due to the recent news of Erdogan firing all the Central bank deputies who had unorthodox views on the Economy and had Erkan replacing them with well-known, reputable, orthodox economists who had respectable positions in the West especially America

 

[B_A]

There are several reasons for that:

The first reason is all of those countries have oil and gas reserves Thailand produced 11.6 million metric tons of oil in 2022, Vietnam produced 10.84 million tonnes in 2022, and finally Malaysia produced two million tons of oil. Turkey only produced 3 million tons of oil and used 30 million tons last year, this means that Turkey going to continue to suffer from a trade deficit unless it changes its energy strategy.

Turkey needs to follow the example of states like France, South Korea, and Japan and start to invest heavily in nuclear power. The three countries mentioned do not have any oil reverse of their own but have been able to overcome that disadvantage by investing in nuclear power in order to keep money in the country. Turkey has not only failed to build its nuclear power plant, which was something that Turkey should have done back in the 1980s, but Turkey has screwed up its current nuclear program.

The objective of Nuclear power plants is to achieve energy independence, but Turkey has stupidly set up its nuclear power plant program in a manner that makes it trapped in a system that requires it to keep paying money to a foreign company.

Turkey's decision to be the only country in the world that uses the build–own–operate nuclear power plant model means that the nuclear power plant is owned by a Rosatom subsidiary. the fact that the plant is owned by a subsidiary of a Russian company means that money is transferred outside of Turkey back to Russia; thus continuing the trade deficit for many years to come.

The second reason behind the trade deficit is the Turkish people's habit of seeing gold as an investment winning out over better investment choices that would actually help the economy by putting worth into it.

The preference of Turks to invest in gold creates an environment that increases the trade deficit without adding any value to the Turkish economy. Gold is only valuable because people put a value on it without that sense of value you quickly realize it is a useless metal. Gold doesn't generate any worth to the economy unless you do it, yet many Turks prefer investing in gold over stocks of companies that generate profit and add value.


the Third reason is that Turkish companies proffer to be part of a supply chain for bigger brands rather than rock the boat by making their own brand. The problem with this system is that it creates two big problems the first is that the foreign brands will get most of the profit while the Turkish companies will get the scraps. The second problem is that as soon as wages go up or a new cheaper labour force opens up those brands will which their supply chains to those newer, cheaper labour markets. This happened to Turkey in the mid to late 90s with China slowly eating away at Turkey's share of the low-mid technology market.

The refusal of Turkish companies to establish brands and risk-averse behaviour in entering the high-tech market has led the government to keep adopting policies that favour these cheap labour low to mid-tech companies at the expense of everyone else that lives in Turkey.

Japan started modernization most at same time as tanzimat reforms,they became rich country in 1970s.

S.Korea and Taiwan only started modernization after 1960s,they passed us and became rich in 1990s

Now we almost same level with Thailand ,Vietnam and Malaysia(Vietnam GDP is lower but they had much industy export),but only we had the terrible trade export deficit and crashing currency.

Only our defence sector is almost marking Korea and Japan.

 

[Bozan]

Probably due to the recent news of Erdogan firing all the Central bank deputies who had unorthodox views on the Economy and had Erkan replacing them with well-known, reputable, orthodox economists who had respectable positions in the West especially America

Those deputies he's replacing them with won't have much impact either. It's just to signal to western markets and it isn't working. Erdoganomics is still running the show

 

[Tornadoss]

Probably due to the recent news of Erdogan firing all the Central bank deputies who had unorthodox views on the Economy and had Erkan replacing them with well-known, reputable, orthodox economists who had respectable positions in the West especially America

Isn't it erdogan himself insisting an unorthodox economic policies aka Nas economy?

 

[Bozan]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1684555315470106624

The decline of income tax in tax revenues. An economist could probably shed light if our corporations are doing amazing or if people are just becoming very poor. Income tax is 13.6%, sales tax is 39.7%

 

[Nilgiri]

Japan started modernization most at same time as tanzimat reforms,they became rich country in 1970s.

S.Korea and Taiwan only started modernization after 1960s,they passed us and became rich in 1990s

Now we almost same level with Thailand ,Vietnam and Malaysia(Vietnam GDP is lower but they had much industy export),but only we had the terrible trade export deficit and crashing currency.

Only our defence sector is almost marking Korea and Japan.

Turkiye is doing pretty well compared to Thailand actually. Thailand has a whole host of challenges and problems somewhat unique to it that is very long topic to get into (I lived in many parts of south east asia overall and seen certain things firsthand myself).

Manufacturing value added in Thailand is about 135 billion USD right now or population of about 71 million

TR its about 200 billion USD for population of about 85 million.

Both have underlying service strengths in Tourism (services) and have robust agriculture backbone overall too....and of course a whole set of unique challenges and problems (stripping away the politics to look at things objectively as possible).

Malaysia and Vietnam are very different economies to compare w.r.t where they get their value addition from. Malaysia did large capital investments in the 80s and 90s when Turkiye was going through a number of problems regarding the environment for doing that.

Vietnam is largely based on moving things from China, the MVA is volumetrically high, but the transfer ratio to wealth and long term equity leverage is only so much and will take much longer time. You can compare for example their market cap, labour wages and purchasing power to Turkiye for example.

From 2000 - 2020, a big specific issue for Turkiye is the way AKP admin routed investment, which sectors they made attractive and the windfalls for re-investment here.

So things went pretty well (in simple first glance way) from 2000 - 2010 given the emergence from situation of 1980 - 2000 (and its low base effect from squandering that era in various ways by the political and economic turbulence etc).

Lot of FPI, decent increase in FDI, good bonhomie period for supply chain integration into EU market and so on.

But there was not much attention given to things like oil refining and core capital industries like that (where margins are low and needs strategic impetus).

Just look at the amount of refined petroleum Turkiye has to import nowadays.

This creates cascade impact on its entire energy import bill (now a full ~40 billion USD each year that could have been single digit if you net export refined products to make up for it)

This was grossly insufficient:

Refined Oil Products Production | World Refined Oil Statistics | Enerdata

Get statistics for Refined Oil Products Production from the Enerdata database in a interactive chart.

yearbook.enerdata.net

From 2000 to 2014, production stagnated from 24 mt to 22 mt (when really things should have kicked in from 2005 itself)

Only after that increased to about 40 mt now to 2022....one can gauge the capacity story from it (it would need more research)

But the investments were all expensive and not optimal it looks like, given what I can see from TR refined export/import ratio and consumption. i.e too little too late for what TR economy needed in this chunk of 20 years.

The better period for doing this was missed.

In just mediterranean area, Spain and Italy have refine production and capacity now ~ 3 times that of Turkiye. They are able to finance a lot more of their own energy imports with what they can export refined.

Turkiye is one of those rare industrial countries that imports refined petroleum twice what it exports....most industrial countries of sizeable population export refined much more than they import refined given the capacities they developed for refining (imported crude etc) at bulk for internal demand.

There are core industrial sectors where its same story (and now TR stuck with import bill or low MVA consequence in the sector)....TR didn't target enough things deeply in the first 10 years of that period while it had the opportunity to do so....w.r.t base inputs that help higher tiers of economy.

This is why TR economy caught cold very easily from AKP unorthodox economic policy that was gravitated to helping sectors like real estate (and keeping credit cheap there) at expense to rest of economy.

An economy cannot grow with too much real estate focus, PRC with all its industrial push is also suffering this internally and its going to get lot worse for them......TR could afford this route even less (the sunk in costs that are not elastic response enough to world economy arteries). It is going to take TR a lot of time to extricate out of this problem.

 

[Rodeo]

Turkiye had for far too long a strong currency. This made imports cheap and exports expensive. There was no incentive to produce goods in Turkiye and the Turkish people enjoyed materialistic imports beyond their true wealth.

We had to go through the dumbest experiment in the republic's history to find out that this theory does not hold water. It is erroneous and overly simplistic to view the economy. Much of our sufferings stem from this "unorthodox" policy.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

 

[B_A]

Turkiye is doing pretty well compared to Thailand actually. Thailand has a whole host of challenges and problems somewhat unique to it that is very long topic to get into (I lived in many parts of south east asia overall and seen certain things firsthand myself).

Manufacturing value added in Thailand is about 135 billion USD right now or population of about 71 million

TR its about 200 billion USD for population of about 85 million.

Both have underlying service strengths in Tourism (services) and have robust agriculture backbone overall too....and of course a whole set of unique challenges and problems (stripping away the politics to look at things objectively as possible).

Malaysia and Vietnam are very different economies to compare w.r.t where they get their value addition from. Malaysia did large capital investments in the 80s and 90s when Turkiye was going through a number of problems regarding the environment for doing that.

Vietnam is largely based on moving things from China, the MVA is volumetrically high, but the transfer ratio to wealth and long term equity leverage is only so much and will take much longer time. You can compare for example their market cap, labour wages and purchasing power to Turkiye for example.

From 2000 - 2020, a big specific issue for Turkiye is the way AKP admin routed investment, which sectors they made attractive and the windfalls for re-investment here.

So things went pretty well (in simple first glance way) from 2000 - 2010 given the emergence from situation of 1980 - 2000 (and its low base effect from squandering that era in various ways by the political and economic turbulence etc).

Lot of FPI, decent increase in FDI, good bonhomie period for supply chain integration into EU market and so on.

But there was not much attention given to things like oil refining and core capital industries like that (where margins are low and needs strategic impetus).

Just look at the amount of refined petroleum Turkiye has to import nowadays.

This creates cascade impact on its entire energy import bill (now a full ~40 billion USD each year that could have been single digit if you net export refined products to make up for it)

This was grossly insufficient:

Refined Oil Products Production | World Refined Oil Statistics | Enerdata

Get statistics for Refined Oil Products Production from the Enerdata database in a interactive chart.

yearbook.enerdata.net

From 2000 to 2014, production stagnated from 24 mt to 22 mt (when really things should have kicked in from 2005 itself)

Only after that increased to about 40 mt now to 2022....one can gauge the capacity story from it (it would need more research)

But the investments were all expensive and not optimal it looks like, given what I can see from TR refined export/import ratio and consumption. i.e too little too late for what TR economy needed in this chunk of 20 years.

The better period for doing this was missed.

In just mediterranean area, Spain and Italy have refine production and capacity now ~ 3 times that of Turkiye. They are able to finance a lot more of their own energy imports with what they can export refined.

Turkiye is one of those rare industrial countries that imports refined petroleum twice what it exports....most industrial countries of sizeable population export refined much more than they import refined given the capacities they developed for refining (imported crude etc) at bulk for internal demand.

There are core industrial sectors where its same story (and now TR stuck with import bill or low MVA consequence in the sector)....TR didn't target enough things deeply in the first 10 years of that period while it had the opportunity to do so....w.r.t base inputs that help higher tiers of economy.

This is why TR economy caught cold very easily from AKP unorthodox economic policy that was gravitated to helping sectors like real estate (and keeping credit cheap there) at expense to rest of economy.

An economy cannot grow with too much real estate focus, PRC with all its industrial push is also suffering this internally and its going to get lot worse for them......TR could afford this route even less (the sunk in costs that are not elastic response enough to world economy arteries). It is going to take TR a lot of time to extricate out of this problem.

Thank you very much for your kind post.

Of course Turkiye had her own advanages,and Malaysia ,Vietnam ,Thailand are different from each other.I didnt meant Turkiye worse than them.

Actually (in my opinion)Istanbul is as good as many super city in G7 in World.

I just wonder why we had so much large deficit every year,especially with the Chinese....(deficit with Iran or Russia is understanding)

 

[Nilgiri]

Thank you very much for your kind post.

Of course Turkiye had her own advanages,and Malaysia ,Vietnam ,Thailand are different from each other.I didnt meant Turkiye worse than them.

Actually (in my opinion)Istanbul is as good as many super city in G7 in World.

I just wonder why we had so much large deficit every year,especially with the Chinese....(deficit with Iran or Russia is understanding)

Loved Istanbul while I was there. Such great city, real nice people and atmosphere. Will visit again for sure.

Wherever you have trade deficit with some country today, you got to look at the investment story of the last 10, 20 , 30 years in those sectors between the two countries.

Production and pricepoint involved (absolute and comparative advantage if you want to look up more on the topic) in current time frame is always related to that larger upstream timeframe preceding it.

It can be done even with raw advantages at play (say taking into consideration China's much larger population, land and natural resources within etc).

i.e what was the investment lacking within Turkiye (in final tier production with high enough MVA) to import lower intermediates from China (when it had not yet developed the final tier broadly and also where it had, Turkiye still had much better access to EU market to develop a model here as springboard for China to EU etc and then reinvest the profit into other things to prepare for future sectors etc).

Or how did Turkiye not sufficiently develop things advantageous to it (w.r.t its main markets) or processing of inputs (like Energy) to act as counter (today) to raw absolute advantage China was developing about 20 years ago....and accepting that as fait accompli (rather than trying to meet pound for pound in each thing directly that China is already doing and going to do etc).

i.e how to optimise things around China (and every large economy getting from A to B fast with raw size they are bringing to bear)....rather than do head to head thing.

i.e if you export much more to other countries (and you get reliable there in those sectors), it doesnt matter so much what your trade deficit is with one large country like China.

But it needs proper investment analysis....its not always "what is easiest". Lot of countries too easily keep doing what's easy during the better time of growth (when really they should plan for the less good or bad time ahead to smooth it out there and keep pushing through to next good time etc).

If core industry in Turkiye is all as lopsided as its oil refining sector, that is huge amount of money Turkiye is forking out each year now that it didnt need to (with wiser investment choice done earlier)....because these things are a "no matter what you have to buy" (inelastic demand) relatively speaking....they feed into each and every thing almost every Turkish citizen does daily....and what he needs to make things to sell to others so he can buy from them too.

I look at Thailand for example in oil refining, it exports about 8 billion USD in refined petroleum and imports about 4 billion USD.

Why is it only Turkiye that imports double what it exports on this (something like 6 billion versus 11 billion for 2021)?

Its bad investment decision done some time back. Everything that cascades from this counts in the end (i.e it cascades much more than the deficit of 5 billion into all kind of costs).

If its 11 billion versus 6 billion, thats profit of 5 billion that TR could deploy elsewhere in the end....and not be pained by impact of higher oil prices in a year as it can make up some portion of this by exporting refined products more etc in that environment.

Having negative in inelastic base input (with bad investment choices) like refined petroleum just means with higher oil price, that deficit worsens and compounds....affecting all pricepoints (from the inflation caused at each stage)....including other sectors that export something.

So if same kind of story for other inputs like chemicals, metals, materials, intermediates and whatever else (non optimal investment and attention given earlier).... that means you fork out more and your industries pay more and its weight they are stuck with that they didnt have to be....and it impacts what they can invest to improve for future and so on.

If it gets real bad, there is phenomenon known as "middle income trap"....which is essentially a sustained mismanagement of equity the country had over a long timeframe (i.e why Brazil stuck, why south korea moved past it etc).

Its all related to making proper investments at the proper intensity and window.....in the crucial "long term" sectors especially (be it input or output at some point in an economic chain and how much of it you have within the country).

 

[No Name]

Japan started modernization most at same time as tanzimat reforms,they became rich country in 1970s.

S.Korea and Taiwan only started modernization after 1960s,they passed us and became rich in 1990s

Now we almost same level with Thailand ,Vietnam and Malaysia(Vietnam GDP is lower but they had much industy export),but only we had the terrible trade export deficit and crashing currency.

Only our defence sector is almost marking Korea and Japan.

Japan started modernizing in 1868 and the Ottomans began reforming in 1839 despite this, Japan had it much easier than the Ottomans. The population of the Ottoman Empire was 27,230,000 in 1831, and the population of Japan was over 30 million at the start of the 1800s and was 34,985,000 in 1873. the Japanese population was completely Japanese, while the Ottoman Empire only had about 7 to 9 million Turks, thus making it harder for the Ottomans to modernise.

The Ottomans were also invaded constantly every decade, while the Japanese have been invaded only once in their entire history back in the 1300s by the Mongols, and even that wasn't really an invasion as most of the Mongol fleet was destroyed by a storm. The constant wars with the other great powers led to the massacre of the local population and economic devastation, thus leading to a debt crisis.

South Korea and Taiwan had export-driven industrialisation starting in the 60s, while Turkey maintained an import-substitution industrial development model developed during the Kemalist one-party era. Turkey's development model led to an inefficient economy until Turgut Özal reformed the Turkish economy into an export-driven industrialisation model. In other words, Turkey only adopted the same economic model 20 years after the Asian tigers.

Turkey's failed import-substitution industrial development model for 50 years led to a rent-seeking and clientelist environment across Turkey. The rent-seeking had such a greatly impacted that not-profitable state-subsidized companies employed around 14% of the population in the 80s. The cultural impact of 50 years of this practice has led to mass corruption of Turkish institutions that today manifests as AKP clientelism. The CHP has its share of clientelist and rent-seeker patrons; this can be seen at the municipality level, where the system is at its strongest.

South Korea had a similar problem in the form of chaebol, with the largest ten making up 60 per cent of its economy. The difference between Turkey rent-seekers and the Korean chaebol is that they were designed to grow into world brands that bring profit back to Korea from abroad. The Turkish companies were designed to create domestic Turkish equivalents of foreign products to turn Turkey into an industrialised autarky.

Here is an essay about Turkeys rent-seeking