Emitter: Measures should be taken to revitalize production

Veysel Yayan, Secretary General of the Turkish Steel Producers Association, underlined the need to take measures to revive production.

In the Bloomberg HT broadcast he attended, Yayan said, “The year 2022 was bad and we expected a partial improvement in 2023. However, the occupation of Russia in February of last year and the earthquake we experienced in February of this year affected us negatively. We have largely survived the destruction caused by the earthquake. Production fell by a third in the first month. Production, which was 227 thousand tons in the second month, increased to 500 thousand tons. Later, it increased to 900 thousand tons, exceeding the level of last year. As of this month, we have completely left the destruction of the earthquake behind; but our losses lower our average. With the decrease in production in 2022, there is a decrease of more than 30 percent when viewed cumulatively. We are waiting for this to improve, there are some signs that it will improve,” he said.

“There is a contraction in the world. On the other hand, we had a bad time in terms of energy. Energy prices increased differently in Turkey than in other countries. We stumbled in terms of energy, we lost our place in the markets to a large extent, we could not be competitive. We cannot feel the value that other countries give to the steel industry in Turkey. We got down on our knees last year, now we’re trying to get up. We have no choice but to adopt an export-based economy model. We have twice the capacity of our production,” he said.

Saying that measures should be taken to stimulate production, Yayan said, “The foreign exchange policy should be maintained until a reasonable balance is established and the free market mechanism should be fully felt in the Central Bank’s practices as soon as possible. Currency scissors show that there is no healthy situation in the market,” he added.