Results board meeting Chamber of Commerce Foundation

During a recent board meeting, it was decided to open the doors to new board members.

Türkiye is ‘booming’ and offers many trading opportunities for SME companies. This demands experts and entrepreneurs who have affinity and experience with Türkiye.

The current board seats are held by entrepreneurs and experts in the area of tax advice and international corporate restructuring; legal services; bilateral trade relations, import/export; transport and logistics; IT, energy; project management and the healthcare sector. The vacant place is for a Turkish entrepreneur because of maintaining a balance between Dutch and Turks in the board.

The results of 2021 are satisfactory. Attention has been paid to further strengthen the foundation structure, to build a database with 15K company data, to establish relations with interest groups in both countries, organising trade missions, drawing up trade statistics reports, streamlining the human resources and the renewal of agreements with affiliated commercial service providers/partners.

Given the great success of the (Agri) trade mission in 2021, trade missions will be organized again in 2022. The first applications have already been received from Dutch companies interested in the sectors processed food, metal, furniture/interior and textile.

The ITR Connect initiative offering ‘good and cheaper’ Turkish IT/software experts for Dutch companies is showing good results. Contracts with Dutch clients are signed while the project is being supervised professionally, according to the responsible board member. The latter is also open to new project management requests from interested Dutch companies in Türkiye.

Furthermore, the board discussed handled trade applications from the Netherlands and Türkiye. In general, Dutch companies are searching Turkish production suppliers, or assistance for legal and administrative issues, or they want to have a local visit carried out in Türkiye to  solve misunderstandings during production processes. From the Turkish side, there is often a need to find suitable Dutch clients and to market specific products.