TUNÇ: WE HAVE 69 BILLION DOLLARS OF EXPORT SURPLUS IN THE LAST 16 YEARS

Indicating that Turkey ranks 7th globally in terms of agricultural revenue and first among countries located in Europe, Agriculture and Forestry Deputy Minister Mehmet Hadi Tunç said, "In the last 16 years our country in foreign agricultural and food products gave a total of 69 billion dollars export surplus."

134 billion TL support to farmers in 17 years...

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Mehmet Hadi Tunç, who came to his hometown of Elazığ to participate in various visits and programs, made some statements.

Deputy Minister Tunç stated that they have given support to farmers about 134 billion TL in the last 17 years and added, “Our agricultural output which was 36.9 billion TL in 2002, reached 217 billion TL and total exports of agricultural products increased by 378 percent to 17.7 billion dollars."

Export surplus of 69 billion dollars in 16 years...

Tunç said, "In the last 16 years, Turkey's total export surplus was 69 billion dollars in the foreign trade of agriculture and food products. Today, Turkey is a country in foreign trade of agricultural products undoubtedly a net exporter. This is not enough for us. We need to work harder and reach further points."

"As the Ministry, we approach our sector's problems with a realistic and solutionist approach and treat our sector as a strategic and competitive economic sector and strive to produce policies and projects in this direction. We will continue to work with the same understanding as we have done so far," he also noted.

Our producers guarantee food security...

Tunç continued as follows: "We will continue to support and support our producers in this direction. Because the main actors of our food guarantee are our producers. That's why we increased our agricultural subsidies every year and became a partner in the production costs of our producers. Within this scope, we increased the total amount of agricultural support granted to TL 1.8 billion in 2002 by 9 times to TL 16.1 billion in 2019.

By the end of the year, this figure will exceed 136 billion TL. In this context, it was 83 million TL in  2002 but we have raised this support 44 times in livestock to 3.7 billion in 2018. In 2019, this figure jumped to 4.4 billion TL. Our support payments are still continuing."