Last week, Mehmet Simsek, Finance Minister of Turkey told that his country’s GDP would grow 12 percent in the first quarter of 2010. He had claimed that the economy was recovering quickly from the backlash of the global meltdown in view of country’s several internal crisis management programs.

The 2nd TWTB meet, which is expected to become a venue for 7bn of trade deals, is held between 14th and 20th June. According to sources, the meet has been able to attract nearly 2,200 businessmen from 135 countries and 1,200 Turkish traders as well. About 1,600 translators are interpreting the forums into 38 languages, and the participants would form delegations to visit 62 provinces of Turkey.

The primary objective of the meet would be to include and optimize small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of Turkey to tide over the challenges from the monopolistic-oriented economies. Moreover, Turkey has no intention to endlessly wait for the EU membership to shape its economy to usher in growth particularly at a time when Europe is facing a volatile economic climate.

Through the TUSKON, a confederation with a strong base in Turkey and abroad, the country will be assisting entrepreneurs to overcome the language barrier by providing language courses, and in some cases even translations. The Turkish business confederation along with its affiliations across the world would be working together by simplifying and expediting business processes for country’s SMEs to make the export engine move forward rapidly.

The TUSKON has sister organizations in 135 countries across the world, and these institutions are set up by the Turkish entrepreneurs and volunteers to integrate its members to the international business environment. The Indo-Turkish Business Association, Thai-Turkish Business Association, South Africa Turkish Business Association and the Turkish and Cameroon Business Association are some of the business organizations affiliated to the parent confederation.

Turkey as an emerging export-oriented economy is paying vital importance for the TWTB meet as its trading history indicates those Turkish international business entities monetized significantly better than the domestic ones. A number of government agencies and companies including the Foreign Ministry, the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM), Turkish Airlines (THY) and Bank Asya are joining force with the TUSKON to make the meet successful.

Toboc Trade News

The ITC found children or siblings of the people involved in the organic farming activities were better fed, better clothed and performed better at school than others. The workers of this sector were better informed about the ill-effects of dangerous diseases such as, HIV/AIDS. They also enjoyed better human resources development practices including employee safety, free transport and so on.

Lately, the growing concern over climate change has tagged ‘Food miles’ to airfreighted products threatening livelihoods of many people in Kenya and other African countries involved in this trade. Various organic certifiers from Europe have even withdrawn organic certification to airfreighted products by branding them as products of high carbon footprint.

However, due to the concerted effort by the ITC and the DFID, the UK government department which works for human development and poverty alleviation, the Soil Association certifier has assured that they would continue to certify airfreighted organic products from Africa. ITC strongly argued that despite the UK beef production generated many times more greenhouse gases than other forms of animal protein production it passed similar certification test. Interestingly findings of a research showed a 10km car trip to a supermarket generated more carbon emissions than airfreighting a kilogram of beans from Kenya.

The leading airfreight export countries are Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Zambia and the US. There are also other African nations involved in this trade including South Africa, Cameroon, Gambia and Ghana. ITC feels a sustained growth in the organic market without any hiccups like that of the certification issue could help many farmers and workers in Africa to lead a quality life.

Toboc Trade News