The world’s going through hard times.
The natural stone sector is suffering severe losses due to the outbreak.
I have the export figures of Italy, one of the leading countries in the world, before me. I compare them with ours.
The natural stone export of Italy decreased by 21.5% in the first five months of 2020, while for Turkey it was 11.4%.
Italy’s export to the US, France, the UK, and the UAE decreased by 32%, 26%, 24%, and 36%, relatively. In the same period, Turkey’s loss in the same countries was recorded as 17%, 46%, 25%, 20%, relatively.
If you ask which countries made Italy happy in this hard period, Saudi Arabia with an increase of 117% and Qatar 17%, come on the lead, while Turkey decreased in Saudi Arabia (1.20%) and Qatar (16.7%).
In other words, Turkey, a leading player in these two markets, suffered a decrease while the Italians doubled their exports. This part drew my attention.
We had the export figures of Turkey for August 2020 when we were preparing the magazine. We saw that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were the countries that turned the regression of the first five months by 26% and 6%, relatively.
We were already celebrating when we figured out through a Whatsapp group that some serious sanctions were being inflicted to prevent marble importers in Saudi Arabia from purchasing Turkish products and some customers had to cancel their orders. The discussions made it clear that the matter had elevated to the foreign ministry.
To be honest, I’m quite curious about how Turkey will get through these tensions of foreign politics as it was slowly getting over the distress caused by the pandemic.
What I’m saying is that I wish the problem of the Turkish natural stone industry was limited to the pandemic!
