Furniture, paper and forest products sector realized $678 million of exports last month.
According to the statement of Istanbul Exporters’ Associations (IIB), the sector, which exported $608 million in July, reached $678 million in August. Iraq, which ranked first among the countries to which the sector exports the most, for 7 months of the year, maintained its place in August as well. Iraq ranked first with $666 million, followed by Israel with $271 million.
Exports to the United Kingdom, which ranked third, amounted to $261 million, while furniture, paper and forest products were exported to Germany, which ranked fourth, with $223 million, and to the USA, which ranked fifth, with $201 million.
While Russia increased its share in furniture, paper and forest products exports the most, with 36.50%, exports to Russia reached $147 million. Other countries at the top of the list were Libya, Iran, France and Morocco.
“We aim to increase the dominance of our sectors in the countries”
Erkan Ozkan, President of the Istanbul Furniture, Paper and Forest Products Exporters Association, whose views were included in the statement, said:
“The first half of 2023, which we started with great hopes, passed with difficulties. Both the major earthquake disaster we experienced and the economic fluctuations around the world put all sector representatives in great difficulty. However, despite all the negative events, we did not give up and continued our struggle. We started the second half of the year with more hope and our export figures started to rise again. We want to reach our target figure by the end of the year by continuing this trend.
We are working to expand the export markets dominated by the sectors within our structure and to increase the export figures we have achieved. Within the scope of the strategies created by our Ministry of Commerce, we aim to increase the dominance of our sectors in the relevant countries by making plans on the countries of the Islamic Cooperation Organization. We do not work with the goal of success in the short term. Our goal is to achieve sustainable success. For this reason, we work with the aim of increasing our market dominance in more than 200 countries we export to, and reaching high export figures for our sectors. We have an industry structure that is dynamic and increases its production volume day by day. In this way, we believe that we will achieve the success we aim for.”
Source: Trthaber / Prepared by Irem Yildiz