According to the statement of Istanbul Exporters’ Associations (İİB), the sector, which exported 608 million dollars in July, reached 678 million dollars 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 was in the first place with 666 million dollars, followed by Israel with 271 million dollars.
Exports to the United Kingdom, which ranked third, was 261 million dollars, while furniture, paper and forestry products were exported to Germany, which ranked fourth, with 223 million dollars, and to the USA, which ranked fifth, with 201 million dollars.
While Russia increased its share in furniture, paper and forest products exports the most, with 36.50 percent, exports to Russia reached 147 million dollars. Other countries at the top of the list were Libya, Iran, France and Morocco.
“We aim to increase the dominance of our sectors in countries”
Erkan Özkan, President of 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 a lot of pressure on all sector representatives. 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 achieve. We aim to increase the dominance of our sectors in the relevant countries by making plans for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation countries within the scope of the strategies created by our Ministry of Commerce. We do not work with the goal of success in the short term. Our aim is to achieve sustainable success. For this reason, we are working with the aim of reaching high export figures for our sectors by increasing our market dominance in more than 200 countries we export to. We have a dynamic sector structure that increases its production volume day by day. In this way, we believe that we will achieve the success we aim for.”
