General Manager’s Message

Under the strategic transformation project we initiated in 2020 at Turk Eximbank, we have finalized our roadmap to increase our Bank’s contribution to exports in 2021 and thereafter.

increasing contribution

Our exports maintained its pace despite the pandemic conditions

We left behind a tough year that saw significant declines in the world trade resulting from the decelerations suffered by global economies due to the epidemic that broke out in China by end-2019 and quickly spread across the world. In a pandemic-dominated 2020, our country registered an exports volume worth USD 169.5 billion. As Turk Eximbank, we continue to work and mobilize all our resources and capabilities to render this strong exports performance sustainable. To this backdrop of persisting uncertainties tainting the world economy, the importance of exports for our country’s macroeconomic stability became even more evident. It is vital to finance high added-value exportation in order to achieve the exports volume that will drive sustainable growth. Turk Eximbank undertakes a key role in terms of converting our country’s manufacturing strength into exportation. The greatest supporter of exporters, Turk Eximbank will keep offering ever-increasing and diversifying financing and export credit insurance facilities to exporters on one hand, while continuing to back them with the purpose of presenting them with competitive advantage through incentive mechanisms aimed at increasing our exporters’ shares in international trade on the other.

Turk Eximbank kept standing by the exporters also through this period

As Turk Eximbank, we assumed all kinds of responsibility falling upon us for consistent continuance of exports and for keeping our exporters unharmed in this period during which world economies came almost to a halt, and we helped our exports and exporters capture their deserved position thanks to the supports extended by our Government and our Central Bank.

During 2020, our Bank produced solutions for diverse financing needs of our exporters. Three new products we have introduced serve as an important indicator of the fact that 2020 has been a productive year for us in spite of all the challenging conditions it has presented. For the first time, we have introduced the “Participation Finance Investment Loan” with up to 10-years maturity for exporters and SMEs wishing to work with the principles of participation finance system. Furthermore, under the “Credit Program Based on the Insured Export Receivables”, we considered all short-term export receivables of our exporters insured by Turk Eximbank as a pool of credit collateral and began offering financing up to 1 year. Under the “Letter of Guarantee” program, we began catering to the needs for bid bonds, performance bonds, and advance payment bonds of contractors, shipbuilders and investment goods manufacturers.

Our Bank was assigned a grade 1 point higher than our national banking industry by the international rating agencies. As a sign of the trust held in our Bank, we kept supporting our exporters with low-cost funding worth approximately USD 2.8 billion we have borrowed from international markets in the reporting period. Within these funds obtained, two are particularly significant: the resource in the amount of EUR 380 million, 50% of it guaranteed by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), a member of the World Bank Group, which deal is a first in Turkey and only the second in the world in terms of its structure, and the facility in the amount of USD 100 million secured from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), which will be on-lent with the participation finance method.

We are helping our exporters and contractors become more competitive in international markets. To this end, we have signed cooperation agreements paving the way for co-financing, co-insurance, guarantee and insurance with the export credit agencies of the relevant countries for the projects they will carry out with their foreign partners in third countries; our initiatives in this vein will continue.

In keeping with our mission of being by the side of our exporters as Turk Eximbank, we are offering service out of 32 different locations made up of 20 branches and 11 liaison offices in order to have direct contact with our exporters, to cater to their needs on-site and faster. Hence, we maintain a presence in our provinces realizing 94 percent of our exports, and sustain our close contact with our exporters. Furthermore, our “Credit Mobile” Project, which is an extension of our “Credit Online” Project in response to the needs and demands, renders our Bank’s services accessible through mobile phones, which will allow us to offer faster service to our exporters. Also ongoing are our initiatives related to business intelligence solutions for monitoring banking services and for their efficient Bank-wide reporting.

A total of USD 45.6 billion support to exports

During 2020, Turk Eximbank’s cash lending to our exporters was up by 7 percent to USD 28.5 billion, and we have created a secure sales environment for them by insuring exports worth USD 17.1 billion. Thus, we have increased our Bank’s total support to our exporters by 4% year-over-year to USD 45.6 billion. The ratio of support to exports went up from 24.3 percent to 26.9 percent, and our Bank has been involved in 26.9 of each USD 100-exports. In 2021, on the other hand, we are targeting to bring our total support to above USD 50 billion.

The number of exporter firms extended support by our Bank reached 13,102 in 2020. As Turk Eximbank, we value that a higher number of our SME exporters are being given support, and we are glad that SMEs make up 90% of 953 exporters that made use of the Bank’s supports for the first time ever in the past one year. While SMEs accounted for around 60% of the exporters benefiting from our Bank’s services in 2017, this ratio topped 70% in 2020.

Turk Eximbank will be the bank going cross-border and growing together with our exporters.

Under the strategic transformation project we initiated in 2020 at Turk Eximbank, we have finalized our roadmap to increase our Bank’s contribution to exports in 2021 and thereafter. Focusing on transforming the support we extend to our exporters into higher growth in exports under this comprehensive project, we are targeting to increase our support to exports both on the basis of countries and sectors. While evaluating the effectiveness of the supports we are providing, we also are concentrated on projects that will help us work faster and more efficiently by replicating the dynamism in exports also within our Bank.

We are hoping that trade will be livelier on a global scale in 2021 than it was in 2020. We are fully confident that our country will achieve the USD 184 billion-worth of exports targeted for 2021, and as Turk Eximbank, we will determinedly and steadfastly keep standing by our exporters with all our strength also this year.

Ali GÜNEY

General Manager