On Wednesday, April 10, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak shared the primary details of a comprehensive reform package that will lead Turkey toward sustainable and healthy growth and prioritize the production of value-added goods with the economic circles and the business world.

One of the major pillars to reach macroeconomic targets that I've described is to establish a saving capability for the Turkish economy. For this purpose, the restructuring of the private pension system, a strong and deep-rooted capital market, in addition to this, a reformist step where the real sector severance pay fund will be managed over the private pension system, are all critically important.

The road to the transition of the Turkish economy to a new healthy and sustainable growth phase and a new era requires, first, the strengthening of the financial structure of the real sector, similarly, strengthening the financial structure of the banking sector and alleviating the burden of problematic loans.

Therefore, in order to reinforce momentum generated by the new reform package that illustrates the future design of the Turkish economy, in the first phase, prioritizing steps that will ease the relationship between the real sector-banking sector, the transfer of special issue bonds accepted as capital to public banks, and the management of the energy and real estate sector loans by restructuring the banking system's consolidated financial statements to transferring the two to separate funds created from the balance sheets for special purposes, can all be defined as on-point steps.

For the fight against inflation, especially to stabilize pricing in agriculture and food, a new greenhouse approach make up the primary steps in the short term; which will ensure the security of supply, steps to increase the number of small cattle, the restructuring of the supply chain from the field to the consumer's table.

The new agricultural strategy that will be shared in May and the new export strategy which will be unveiled in August will be critically important. The amendments that will be made on trade and debt laws, the regulations will enable real sector companies, which lost their competitiveness and cannot repair their financial deterioration, to withdraw from the market, and steps will allow people to pay taxes in ratio to their income while rewarding institutions with gradual corporate tax system, should not be forgotten. In the coming days, we will continue to share the details that will follow the first announced steps.

‘Design of the future' for Turkish economy

The reform steps and measures that Minister Albayrak shared essentially constitute the first steps of the "design of the future" for the Turkish economy. I believe it would not be wrong to define the focal point of the future design as a new economic policy architecture that is production, export, growth and employment friendly.

I can at once list the steps and the policy architecture as an entrepreneur and investor-friendly tax policy, brand new shopkeeper and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) friendly retail and wholesale trade and procurement legislation and incentive and support policies for domestic and national entrepreneurs, as an academician in the field of economics for the last 32 years.

For the future design of the Turkish economy, a strategy that will strengthen the volume and added value of exports, Turkey's power in traditional export markets, and amp up its access to new export markets, will undoubtedly be a part of fresh steps that will provide excitement to the economic world.

In addition to this, a brand new understanding of development and investment banking, development-based public acquisition policies, as much as the strengthening of capital markets, are some suggestions or details that come to mind.

In the future design of the Turkish economy, while the shift of the center of gravity between Asia-Pacific and Atlantic continue at utmost intensity, Turkey stands out in the global economy as a crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa and requires Turkey to implement a digital transformation process that will strengthen its rising role in world trade with e-exports, blockchain technologies and digital money.

All of the topics that I have tried to express above mean designing a future that will affect all service sectors such as tourism, health care, education, finance, real estate, logistics, transportation, communications, software, in addition to main sectors like agriculture, industry and construction.