HİT Global Founder İbrahim Çevikoğlu listed methods on how to balance Turkey's imports and exports and shared valuable information.
When Turkey's foreign trade data for 2022 is analyzed, it has an import of 354 billion dollars and an export of 254 billion dollars. The 110 billion dollar foreign trade deficit, on the other hand, raises questions about how the balance between imports and exports can be achieved.
CLOSING THE SCISSOR BETWEEN EXPORT AND IMPORT IS NECESSARY
In this context, HİT Global Founder İbrahim Çevikoğlu shared valuable information on how to balance Turkey's imports and exports. Expressing that every company has a responsibility to close this gap between Turkey's exports and imports, Çevikoğlu made the following assessments:
“Although there are some critical steps that our state has taken so far and should take in the new period in order to close the Turkey's foreign trade deficit, I think that closing this gap is not a situation that will result in the practices of our state alone. For example, a significant part of our foreign trade deficit is energy and our government is taking extraordinary steps in this regard. However, each company has its own responsibilities, rather than our state, in replacing imports with better alternatives. To give an example over the textile sector; a company that produces finished textile products buys yarn to produce fabric. There is yarn in Turkey, but it also comes from abroad. The yarn producer in Turkey, on the other hand, needs cotton for production. of the yarn manufacturer; It is understandable that it has to import because of the domestic cotton production volume or the expected quality and type of cotton is not available enough, but it is caught between a dilemma such as Uzbek cotton or American cotton. However, a substantial portion of the quality cotton we buy as American cotton is quality cotton produced in Africa. Among the cottons we buy as American cotton, there are actually cottons that America has set a decent quality standard, but bought from Africa and sold to us. However, when we make an effort to go directly and buy it ourselves from Africa, our costs are significantly reduced and our profitability increases, since an intermediary is out of the way. Of course, this is just one of the examples we have personally witnessed. It is an important point that the inputs that we have to import for production are improved by seeking new alternative supplies instead of the established supply chain that has been accustomed to date. Of course, changing the existing supply chain may have risks, but it is not possible to improve if the alternative is not studied. If every importing company fulfills its responsibility, our foreign trade deficit will decrease.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMERCIAL INTELLIGENCE IN ACCESSING ALTERNATIVE SUPPLY
Stating that the supply chain in the world is changing day by day, therefore there should be a constant search for an alternative supply, İbrahim Çevikoğlu stated that the USA even shared its private customs documents with the world in order to improve its own imports and gave the following information:
“America, in order to make its own imports under more favorable conditions, since 2006, the operations carried out at its own customs; started to share documents such as bill of lading-declaration of import-export transactions with the public. When you see the declaration of an import transaction, you can easily see how much money the importer bought, the name of the importer, and the volume of the shipment. Contrary to what is expected, this situation is not contrary to KVKK. The reason for America to do this was to increase the diversity of supply offered to it from the world, and thus to increase productivity by intensifying competition. For example, when the name and volume of an American company that bought a suit for $1500 from Italy is announced to the world, many rival companies to this Italian company see this situation through customs and call the American company and offer a lower amount than the announced unit price of the suit. Thanks to this method, America has significantly improved its imports with better alternatives over the years. The improvement is sometimes price, sometimes speed or quality, of course.”
Çevikoğlu, who shared the information that after this move of the USA, which started the practice of sharing the customs documents, which is the main subject of the concept of foreign trade intelligence, increased to 55, after England, Russia and India, the number of countries that declared their customs documents around the world, and finally made the following suggestions:
“Even the world's global power, America, is trying to balance its exports and imports and to evaluate more suitable alternatives in imports. To evaluate their own supply alternatives for Turkish companies in order to close our foreign trade deficit. When every company does this, the profitability of our exports, sixty percent of which is based on imports, will increase significantly and our foreign trade deficit will decrease day by day. In order to achieve this, the use of commercial intelligence infrastructures is the basic password of the business”