İTHİB President Öksüz: The way out of textile is branding

Ahmet Öksüz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Istanbul Textile and Raw Materials Exporters' Association (İTHİB), stated that Turkey is no longer in a position to compete on price in basic products and said, "Turkey's most important starting point is branding." Öksüz, who said that they expect the sector to make a leap as of the second half of 2025, predicted that the textile and ready-to-wear sectors will close 2025 with a production volume of over 80 billion dollars.

İTHİB Board Chairman Ahmet Öksüz made a statement to Tekstil İşveren magazine, the publication organ of the Turkish Textile Industry Employers' Union (TTSİS).

Stating that 2024 was a negative year for all sectors due to high inflation and the resulting high increases in production costs, İTHİB President Ahmet Öksüz said, “However, the main reason behind the negativity was the global recession. There was a loss of 20 percent in the world's largest textile markets such as the EU and the US. Despite this loss, we are happy that we were able to maintain our market share in these geographies at least.”

Öksüz said that the textile sector could not reflect the increases in costs in foreign currency to the prices due to the global contraction, and drew attention to the fact that the increase in the foreign exchange rate was far below the inflation and wage increases, and expressed the following views:

'We are creating new competitors for ourselves due to wage costs'

“As a labor-intensive sector, wage increases have been a factor that directly increases our costs. We have experienced increases in our costs of up to 40-50 percent in foreign currency. Currently, Turkey is one of the most expensive countries in the region in terms of employment. Due to the fact that minimum wages cost employers so much, unfortunately we are also creating new competitors for ourselves. Especially due to the impact of the global contraction, our sector cannot reflect these cost increases in sales prices. Since we are a labor-intensive sector, wage increases have a very important share in cost increases.”