THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
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Press release…
Ömer Celal Umur, Chairman of Aegean Tobacco Exporters’ Association, made a written assesment for the first half of 2020.
Ömer Celal Umur said that tobacco, as one of Turkey’s traditional export products and produced in different regions across the country, is also an agricultural product which maintains a livelihood for about 56 thousand farmer families.
Reminding that tobacco, which is the most produced agricultural product in the world except food products, Umur said, “This is a plant that concerns wide masses in terms of employment, export and tax revenues.”
Umur explained, “The share of Special Consumption Tax (SCT) and Value Added Tax collected on tobacco products in total tax revenues is around 7 percent, the amount of SCT from the tobacco sector exceeded 42 billion TL in 2018 and reached 50.3 billion TL in 2019. Considering this fact, the contribution of the tobacco industry to our economy becomes clearer. SCT and VAT are derived from the tobacco industry in total, over 60 billion TL annually.”
Stating that according to the Aegean Tobacco Exporters’ records, incorporating all tobacco exporters in Turkey, Umur added, “Turkey’s exports of tobacco and tobacco products go on a band of 900 million to 1 billion dollars annually. By the way leaving 2018 behind with an export figure of 1 billion 11 million dollars, our tobacco industry brought 909 million dollars to our country in 2019.”
“Our exports in the first half of 2020 amount to 426 million 265 million dollars. Our exports in the first half of 2019 were 453 million 38 million dollars,” Umur added.
Pointing out that in the first half of 2020, their exports of tobacco products were 213.5 million dollars, while Saudi Arabia took the first place in exports of tobacco products with an amount of 26 million dollars, Umur said, “Iraq ranked second with 21.5 million dollars and Malta ranked third with a demand for tobacco products of 19 million dollars. The number of countries to which we export tobacco products was 48.”
“USA is owner of the first place among the countries we export with 129 million dollars, while foreign exchange revenue of leaf tobacco amounted to 33 million dollars. We exported 13 million dollars of leaf tobacco to Indonesia and 11.5 million dollars to Poland. Lastly we generated 83.5 million dollars foreign currency income by exporting cut rag tobacco, rolling tobacco and hookah tobacco, while Iran preferred Turkish tobacco amounted to 47 million dollars.
Iran preferred 47 million dollars Turkish tobacco in the export of shredded, spiral tobacco and hookah tobacco, from which we generate 83.5 million dollars foreign currency income,” Umur concluded…
