Kacır: We Will Connect Each City of the GAP Region with Quality Investments Through the Local Development Initiative Incentive Program

Foreks - The Minister of Industry and Technology, Mehmet Fatih Kacır, announced that they will publicly share the details of the 2024-2028 GAP Action Plan in Şanlıurfa as part of the Economic Coordination Council, stating, "I want to convey the good news that we will implement a new action plan that will enable us to achieve our irrigation goals, promote sustainable and smart agricultural practices, act as a driving force in the development of the region that will feed future generations of regional agriculture, create economic added value in rural areas, and turn the region into a tourism attraction."

Minister Kacır attended the GAP Precision Agriculture Phase 2 Promotion Ceremony along with Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, İbrahim Yumaklı. In his speech, Kacır stated that under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, they are resolutely taking steps to mobilize the resources and potential of each region with a continuous and sustainable development approach. Highlighting that they have connected the Southeastern Anatolia region with investments, employment, production, and exports over the last 22 years, Kacır said:

PRODUCTION BASE: In the last 22 years, we have established 20 Organized Industrial Zones (OSBs) in our 9 provinces located in the GAP Region to accelerate the wheels of industry, increase factory construction, and stimulate smokestacks. We have created an additional 360,000 jobs in our OSBs. With our investment incentive system, we paved the way for 15,400 investments, reaching an investment size of 1.1 trillion Turkish liras and providing qualified employment for over 710,000 people. With the trust environment and strong investment climate we have created in the last 22 years, our cities in Southeastern Anatolia have transformed into production bases.

EXPORT SHARE: During this period; exports from Şanlıurfa increased 55-fold from $7 million to $386 million, Batman's exports increased 597-fold from $600,000 to $359 million, Diyarbakır's exports rose 47-fold from $7 million to $329 million, and Gaziantep's exports surged 16 times from $619 million to $10.7 billion. The share of our region in the country's total exports increased from 1.8% to 5.3%. These lands, which have hosted ancient civilizations, are now becoming the center of economic growth, development, and production.

DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS: Through our GAP Regional Development Administration, we continue to present innovative and sustainable development projects to serve our region. In the last 11 years, we have provided support of 6.6 billion liras to 1,038 projects that will support the multi-faceted development of the GAP Region, ranging from precision agriculture to effective management of water resources, rural development, and tourism. With the Small Scale Agricultural Irrigation Program we launched two years ago to increase agricultural production potential in our region, we opened up 318,000 decares of land for irrigation. By next year, we will have opened up 52,500 additional decares for irrigation, providing employment for 49,000 citizens.

GAP INTEGRATED 2.0: With Organic Agriculture, Agricultural Infrastructure, and Rural Development Projects, we have converted 172,000 decares of land into agricultural production and established brands for 15 different products. We have completed the first phase of the "Integrated Rural Development Program," which includes multi-dimensional intervention tools to comprehensively improve the GAP Region. Taking into account the results of impact analyses as well as changes and developments in rural development worldwide, we have initiated the "New Generation Integrated Rural Development Program" (GAP Integrated 2.0).

FOOD STORAGE: Through the Agricultural Training and Extension Program (TEYAP), we have educated over 80,000 farmers to date. We have opened up 675,000 hectares of agricultural land for irrigation. We are turning the GAP Region into our country's food storage. Our goal in line with the GAP Action Plan is to increase irrigable area to 1 million 60 thousand hectares. In the near future, with the expansion of irrigation areas, the production of oilseeds, vegetables, and fruits, which are particularly needed by our country, will further increase, and the GAP Region will be the most significant guarantor of food security for both our country and the region.

AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTS: As the Ministry of Industry and Technology, we will continue to support steps that enable the advanced use of technology to elevate our country's agricultural capacity. We support 235 technology initiatives working on agricultural technologies and 23 R&D centers conducting projects in agriculture within our technoparks. In the last 22 years, we have provided 6 billion liras in support to 2,925 projects in agriculture under TÜBİTAK's grant and support programs and to 1,357 scientists and youths conducting research in this field.

GAP PRECISION: In the first phase of our Precision Agriculture and Sustainable Practices Dissemination Project in the GAP Region, we created a rich data set for precision agriculture studies using satellite images and flight data obtained with a hyperspectral camera. Based on the data we obtained, we have launched the first phase of our domestic and national software GAP Precise, which will blend the farmer's labor with the power of technology, speak the language of the soil, and uncover the secret of its fertility.

TECHNOLOGICAL GUIDE: We completed the innovative interface that integrates the e-Government Platform to facilitate the application of precision agriculture in the field and made it available to our producers by the end of August. Now, our farmers have the opportunity to determine the correct harvest date and the amounts of fertilizers they should use through this software without using any additional equipment in the field. Technology will now also guide our farmers, in addition to the voice of nature.

FUSION CENTER: We have also started working to create a decision support mechanism that our farmers will actively use in the coming period by monitoring approximately 200,000 decares of land with satellite images. Additionally, through the GAP Precision Agriculture Project Fusion Center we have established, we are training consultants to guide our farmers in using technology more effectively in agricultural production.

GAP ACTION PLAN: I want to convey the good news that we will implement a new action plan that will enable us to achieve our irrigation targets, promote sustainable and smart agricultural practices, act as a driving force in the development of the region that will feed future generations of regional agriculture, create economic added value in rural areas, and turn the region into a tourism attraction. Hopefully, as the Economic Coordination Council, we will soon come together in Şanlıurfa under the leadership of our esteemed Vice President with all sector stakeholders. We will share the details of the 2024-2028 GAP Action Plan with the public.

QUALITY INVESTMENTS: With the Local Development Initiative Incentive Program that we will implement in the coming period, we will connect each city in the GAP Region with quality investments. Within this program, we have conducted a comprehensive and multi-dimensional study to bring high-impact investments to our region. We have identified a total of 36 investment headings amounting to 11.8 billion liras that will provide significant advancement in the development of our 9 provinces. The biggest winner of these quality investments we will support will undoubtedly be the people of the region. One of our upcoming priorities is to ensure that the geographical indication products in our region create higher added value for our country’s producers and industrialists.