Trade and Competition
Competitiveness
Food and beverage industry is one of the largest sectors that make significant contributions to the Turkish economy in terms of turnover and employment. As independent of its size, the Federation of Food & Drink Industry Associations of Turkey (TGDF) operates within wide parameters in the fields of science, nutrition and health and environmental sustainability to provide an environment where all food and beverage companies can become more competitive. The duties assumed by the TGDF include monitoring and development of the problems encountered in agricultural markets, thus taking actions that will enhance business opportunities, improvement of the profitability and development of the Turkish Food and Beverage Industry within global economy and particularly supporting technology transfer and researches on new technologies for the SMEs and converting them into efforts that will increase competitive edge.
Providing an enterprise-friendly framework
To maintain competitiveness in the industry, Turkish food and beverage producers need a sufficiently-flexible and enterprise-friendly framework. While the legislation is mandatory in certain areas, alternatives should be evaluated as they could be more effective in other areas. In this regard, TGDF makes a call to remove all barriers in front of the free circulation of food and beverage products for the implementation of the integrated industry policy, improvement of the relations in food chain and completion of single market.
Achieving growth through trade
The food and beverage sector that exports its products has a positive trade balance. TGDF calls for a steady commercial policy that supports the growth of sustainable food and beverage industry to further increase the trade of the Turkish food and beverage products. This policy should also involve commitment to a multilateral trade system and proceeding with key partners in balanced and ambitious mutual trade negotiations.
Ensuring supply assurance
Food and beverage industries rely upon access to the sufficient amount of safe and sustainable raw materials. These raw materials must comply with certain quality criteria and have competitive prices. The areas of interest of TGDF include following up unfair business practices within food supply chain and conducting the necessary studies to resolve the issues. Also, it assists industrialists to enable wide access to high-quality raw materials at competitive prices and to give priority to the use of agricultural raw materials in foodstuffs.
Working in cooperation with stakeholders
As a founding member of the ‘‘National Food Technology Platform’, TGDF contributes to the works of this platform, follows up its strategic agendas, ensures the establishment of a balanced and constructive relationship between the retail sector and food sector, closely follows up the works of WTO, WHO and Codex to increase the influence of Turkey in these organizations and assumes an active role in its integration into food and beverage sector in cooperation with the Ministry of Health.