Oil refiner Tüpraş leads Turkey’s industry league
Engin Esen - ISTANBUL
Refinery giant Tüpraş retained its longtime leadership as Turkey’s biggest industrial enterprise with production-based sales worth 58.6 billion Turkish Liras ($8.4 billion), the Istanbul Chamber of Industry (İSO) said on May 26.
“According to data, more than half of our firms in the İSO 500 list are grouped in three sectors; 118 of them in the ‘base metals and machine manufacturing,’ 85 firms in the ‘road and sea vehicles and supply industries,’ and 65 firms in the ‘chemical, plastic products’ sectors,” said İSO head Erdal Bahçıvan in a presentation to reporters in Istanbul yesterday.
With production-based sales of 45.2 billion liras ($6.5 billion), car manufacturer Ford ranked second in the list of Turkey’s Top 500 Industrial Enterprises in 2020, the presentation showed.
It was followed by Oyak Renault, another carmaker, with 31.2 billion liras ($4.5 billion) last year.
The top 10 industrial giants racked up nearly a quarter of the production-based sale revenues of the top 500 firms.
“While the rise in equity was promising, the current debt-equity ratio [881 billion liras / 407 billion liras] continued to be a chronic problem,” it said.
Bahçıvan noted that while Turkey saw a robust credit expansion of 35 percent last year, the financial debt burden of the top 500 industrial companies rose only 23 percent.
Exports of Turkey’s industrial giants at the list decreased 12.8 percent year on year to $64.1 billion, the report revealed, saying their operating profit increased by 55 percent, employment by 2.9 percent and research and development expenditure by 5 percent.
The work force of the top 500 industrial firms reached 717,000 people. The payroll total was 78.3 billion liras ($9.2 billion) in 2020, an annual increase slightly below the official inflation rate of 14.6 percent.
The number of top 500 industrial enterprises reaping profits increased to 423 in 2020 from 411 in 2019. The figure had dropped to 381 in 2018 from 422 a year ago.
“These figures are important as they show that the industrial sector elaborately protects employment despite all hardships,” said Bahçıvan.
Meanwhile, the number of top 500 industrial companies with foreign capital decreased to 110, down from its 2009 peak of 153.
The number of Istanbul-based enterprises in the list decreased from 180 five years ago to 161 in 2020. The Aegean Region Chamber of Industry was behind Istanbul with 44 companies. The chambers in Ankara, the northwestern province of Kocaeli, the southeastern province of Gaziantep and the northwestern province of Bursa followed with 37, 36, 29 and 19, respectively.
Turkey’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector dropped from 52.6 in March to 50.4 in April despite a production boom in most parts of the world, Bahçıvan noted.
He warned against risks posed by high inflation and interest rates, weakening of the national currency and rising commodity prices as recovery from the COVID-19 accelerates on a global scale.
The İSO has been announcing data on Turkey’s top 500 companies since 1968.