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Ivory Coast, [countries in] Polynesia, Mayotte [an overseas region of France], Peru and the Dominican Republic. Until this year 154 countries bought pasta from local companies, today we are selling our products to a total of 160,” said Abdulkadir Kulahcioglu, board chairman of the Pasta Industrialists’ Association of Turkey. In the first five months of 2019, Turkish pasta producers increased their export revenues by 9% on an annual basis to $230mn while volume shipments grew some 7% y/y to 540,000 tonnes. Last year’s total exports stood at 1.2mn tonnes. According to Kulahcioglu, the Turkish pasta industry is targeting 15% growth in exports this year. He added that the size of the local pasta market was around $1bn and creates more than 40,000 jobs. Annual per capita pasta consumption in Turkey increased from 6.8 kilograms in 2014 to 8 kilograms last year. The total production capacity of Turkey’s pasta companies is 2mn tonnes.
Turkey will this year purchase Giresun quality hazelnuts at a base price of Turkish lira (TRY) 17 ($3.01) per kilo this year and Levant quality hazelnuts at a base price of TRY 16.5 per kilo, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on July 26. He added that Turkey, the world's biggest producer of the nut, was expecting a 2019 hazelenut yield of 700,000 tonnes. Erdogan also stated that the government purchases were aimed at hindering speculators and removing price uncertainties that could damage producers.
9.1.7 Tourism sector news
Foreign tourist arrivals jumped 11.3% on an annual basis to 12.8mn in the first five months of the year. In 2018, a total of 39.5mn foreign nationals visited the country, a 22% increase from 2017. Turkey is one of the top tourist destinations in the world. According to the IMF data, it ranked 8th in the world’ top 10 tourist destinations list. France topped the list with 87mn visitors. However, in terms of revenues generated from tourism activities, Turkey’s performance is rather poor: it ranked 14th with $22bn revenues in 2017. For instance, Germany, which attracted 37.5mn foreign tourists in the same year versus Turkey’s 37.6mn, collected as much as $40bn from international travellers. There are several reasons for this. Mostly lower income groups chose to spend their holiday in Turkey simply because they can afford it thanks to Turkey’s weak lira. Moreover, hotels offer huge discounts to foreign tourists. Thus, foreign visitors’ per capita spending during their stay remains low.
Initial hotel booking data suggests that local tourism activity in recession-hit Turkey will be weak during the eid al-adha holiday that starts on August 10 and ends on August 14. “Bookings made by local holidaymakers for hotels in popular spots are down 10% compared to the previous year. But we see a strong 30% increase in reservations for tours in
64 TURKEY Country Report August 2019 www.intellinews.com