We are an industry that brings income to our state as we produce…

Dear Readers, Dear Colleagues,

As the Turkish mining sector, we bring our underground riches to the surface and bring them to our economy. Together with the affiliated sectors, we contribute approximately 40 billion dollars annually to the national economy.

In 2022, the mining industry increased our exports to 6 billion 469 million dollars with an increase of 9.13 percent compared to the previous year. 2 billion 172 million dollars of this export consisted of metallic ores product group, 2.1 billion dollars of natural stones and 1.3 billion dollars of industrial minerals.

Although our export target for the end of 2022 is much higher, the global recession concerns unfortunately started to negatively affect our exports to our main markets. The exports of our industry, which increased in the first months of the year, unfortunately declined in the last few months of the year. For example, our exports to China, which is our biggest market in natural stone, decreased by more than 30 percent in 2022. The rapid increase in processed marble during the year has also slowed down. Unfortunately, our natural stone industry could not reach its end-of-year export target of $2.5 billion for 2022.

With the effect of the Russia-Ukraine war, the rapid increases in energy prices, especially oil and natural gas, rapidly increase our working capital needs. The increase in costs on the basis of foreign currency and the inability to pass these costs on to the buyers rapidly erode the profits of the companies. This effect is felt more deeply, especially in sectors like

our sector, where energy consumption is intense. For 2023, a great uncertainty awaits us in terms of energy prices. On the other hand, financing costs are high and maturities are short in our country. In fact, access to finance is almost impossible. In addition, due to rapidly increasing operating costs, our businesses are going through a very difficult period. While many business owners want to offer better opportunities to their employees, they also have serious concerns due to uncertainties.

As miners, we do not only contribute to the economy with our exports, but also provide direct resources to our treasury by paying significant amounts of state rights. In the last 10 years, the state right paid by the mining industry to the state has increased significantly. The state right, which our industry paid 365 million lira in 2011, increased 10 times and reached 3.6 billion liras by 2021.

With the development of mining, both our exports and the state rights we pay will reach much higher amounts. We are an industry that earns our state as we produce. We want our industry to grow and our contribution to the economy and employment to increase as we grow. After all, mining is one of the strategic sectors that also contributes significantly to employment. Currently, approximately 155 thousand people are directly employed in the mining sector. When we consider with indirect employment, more than 1 million people participate in economic life by working with the mining sector.

There are some steps that need to be taken in order for the mining sector to grow and to increase its contribution to the economy and employment as it grows. Our most important expectation is to improve the investment environment in the sector. In the last 10 years, we have been experiencing a steady decrease in the number of mineral exploration and operation licenses. The number of licenses, which was 45,900 in 2008, decreased to 14,721 in 2021. This decrease in the number of licenses shows that the interest of the investors in the sector is decreasing rapidly. Uncertainties in licensing and permit processes, decreasing license assurance, increasing production costs, high forest permit fees, license fees, state right fees are the most important reasons for this decrease. This situation not only prevents new investments in the sector, but also causes the existing mining activities to shrink. For the healthy growth and development of the mining industry, it is necessary to increase the security of the license, to ensure that the permit processes are clear and transparent, and to clear the way by removing the restrictions that make mining impossible.

In the permit processes, especially in the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources and MAPEG, our work and transactions are extremely regular and fast, while in other ministries we have to deal with long delays and many problems. Delays in forest permits, illegal refusal decisions, forest costs hundreds of times higher in mining compared to developed countries are some of the problems we face. All these problems create great obstacles in front of the development of the sector. On the other hand, the areas of restriction to mining are increasing day by day to an unrealistic extent. For this reason, the license guarantee continues to decrease unfortunately.

We believe that many of our problems can be solved by bringing natural resources such as forests, water, mines, petroleum, geothermal waters, etc. in our country under a single ministry (for example, the Ministry of Natural Resources). We urgently need a ministry authority that protects the forest, water and mines in a balanced way by evaluating them together, can solve the permits within its own body, and will take decisions for the benefit of the country by evaluating all underground and aboveground resources together.

The way to overcome the economic difficulties we are experiencing as a country is through production. If we want to make a production breakthrough in all sectors, we must pave the way for production in mining. Moreover, the mining sector is supported by the states in all of the world’s developed countries in mining. If the necessary support is given for the development of the mining sector in our country, both the wheels of our industry will turn rapidly and we will continue to break export records.

As Turkish miners, we work for the future of our country and the welfare of our society. However, there are some steps we need to take as an industry in the upcoming period. Of course, our industry has had some mistakes in the past. However, we try to improve ourselves continuously by taking lessons from every mistake we experience and taking into account the sensitivities of the society. We take much more sensitive steps on many issues from occupational health and safety to environment and eco-system, from our carbon footprint to waste and water management. After all, we are aware of our responsibilities to leave a better environment and future for our children. Many mining companies are doing very successful work on these issues. However, unfortunately, we cannot share and explain these good examples with our society enough. I believe that if we can make good examples in our industry much more widespread and show them sufficiently to the society, the support for mining will increase and the perceptions towards our industry will change.

I wish that 2023 will bring abundance and prosperity to our country and our industry.