Turkey forms roadmaps for key sectors in pandemic recovery: Official

ANKARA

As part of a COVID-19 response project to boost resilience against the economic effects of the pandemic, Turkey prepared 25 separate analysis reports on key fragile sectors including textiles, logistics, food, machinery and the automotive sector, a senior official said on Tuesday.

"This especially helped us with roadmaps to avoid business and supply disruptions," Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank said during an online event on the reports, which he said were part of the COVID-19 Response and Resilience Project, carried out in cooperation with the UN Development Program (UNDP) and funded by Japan.

Varank said the initiative was one of the best examples of international cooperation in combating the pandemic. "Regional analyses have been made that will constitute an important input in our policy making processes."

The COVID-19 Crisis Response and Resilience Project will contribute to the recovery of fragile sectors, he stressed.

"In the project, we focused on the recovery of the economies of local and regional actors, increasing their resilience to crises and improving their institutional capacities," he added.

Varank said the main priority of the project was to strengthen the private sector and increase the vocational skills of young people, while another of its outcomes was to train and organize capacity-building activities to improve the digital skills of young people who currently neither in education nor employed.

He also noted that his ministry had spearheaded many efforts to ease the burden of businesses and workers while also increasing their skills and noted that several firms, under the ministry's coordination, had designed and produced an intensive care respirator that both met Turkey's needs and was donated and exported to other countries in need during the pandemic.

Turkey is now preparing to meet medical supplies needs in India, Varank said. "We sent medical aid consisting of oxygen generators, respirators, oxygen tubes and medicine to India last night with two of our military cargo aircraft.

"As Turkey, we will continue to reach out to the whole world in combating the pandemic and to give support as much as we can," he added.

*Writing by Aysu Bicer