Completed: March 2008 - March 2009
The economic policy debates in Turkey have recently started to focus on the need for microeconomic reforms and structural reforms in order to sustain the growth process of the Turkish economy. In this context, competitiveness policies include a wide range of policy areas such as strengthening the export performance of local clusters, identifying and improving infrastructure problems (both physical and institutional); upgrading labor skills; designing the appropriate incentive schemes for encouraging higher value added activities. The 2008 annual program of the Government of Turkey has given the responsibility of preparing Turkey's Industrial Strategy and Entrepreneur Information System to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which is expected to play a more influential and effective role in the design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and coordination of policies that are key to competitiveness ("Industrial Policy"). In order to overcome the capacity constraints and impediments in the areas of policy analysis, formulation, as well as human capital constraints; a project was designed to assist the Ministry in designing the industrial policy, entrepreneur information system, communication policy, and to increase the capacity in the aforementioned areas.
The project, executed by TEPAV, included the following components;
- Component one: Preparation of the Industrial Policy Document
- A comprehensive background report for Turkey’s competitiveness performance
- Sectoral competitiveness analysis of twenty-two manufacturing industries
- Process design for industrial policy monitoring, evaluation and coordination
- Coordination and engagement of all industrial policy stakeholders, through various search conferences, roundtable meetings and workshops
- Component two: Entrepreneur Information System (EIS)
- System design for industrial policy evaluation and impact assessment
- Compilation of existing databases of different public and private agencies
- Needs assessment for collecting additional datasets to integrate into EIS
- Impact assessment for the MIT programs on Special Zones (Organized Industrial Zones, Technology Development Zones, SME Zones)
- Component three: Communication Strategy and Capacity Building
- Design and implementation of Industrial Policy training programs for the experts
- Preparation of presentations, brochures, memos, policy briefs for relevant stakeholders
Type of services provided:
- Technical assistance and consultancy
- Project design and implementation
- Policy analysis and design
- Competitiveness analysis of SMEs
- Strategic planning
- Communication policy and system design
- Stakeholder engagement
- Database management and data analysis
- Cluster mapping and cluster analysis
- Capacity building and training