Kutlu Karavelioğlu, Chairman of the Turkish Machinery Exporters' Association, said that specific solutions have to be developed for the sector to maintain its competitive power and sustain the machinery and equipment investments.

The machinery industry increased exports up to 4 billion dollars at the end of the first 2 months. The sector, of which exports increased by 8.5 percent on quantity basis, increased its prices per kilogram above 6 dollars and achieved an increase of 12.4 percent on value basis. The sector reached a 19.3 percent increase in exports to Italy, which is in the third rank following Germany and the USA. In the January-February period, machinery manufacturers achieved an increase of 55.3% to Russia and 40.3 percent to Ukraine.

Machinery Exporters' Association (MAİB) President Kutlu Karavelioğlu stated that they expect the increases in oil, gas and raw material prices and the Ukraine crisis to bring new price increases in industrial production and consumption, and noted that machinery and equipment investments have increased almost 1.5 times in the last 2 years.

Karavelioğlu said that machinery prices will inevitably increase due to the energy and personnel costs, the effects of which have become clear since the beginning of the year, and the strong impact of the Ukraine crisis on commodity supply and prices. “We will continue to protect our industry against the risk on our global competitiveness and rapidly increasing machinery and equipment investments in our country. We have to develop specific solutions. We should not lag behind the specific support packages that many EU countries with strong machinery manufacturing industries, especially Germany and Italy, are developing to support their domestic industries,” he said.