COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE ANALYSIS FOR TURKISH GRAPE AND CHERRIES EXPORT MARKET

Abstract

Fresh fruits and vegetables production and exports is important for national income composition in Turkey. Turkey, while being a net exporter, faces increasing competition from emerging markets as well as the existing competitors. Despite the Mediterranean supremacy in the fresh vegetables market, fruits market faces overseas competition. While, Chile and the USA rank as the first and the second for grape market, Turkey ranks as the eight. In addition, following the USA, Chile and Hong Kong, Turkey is in the fourth rank for cherries. With this point of view, it was considered as a necessity to overview the changing position of Turkish exports according to main export competitors. Accordingly, it was aimed to measure competitiveness of cherries and grapes (raisins included). Revealed competitiveness of Turkish grape market indicated that, Turkey was more advantageous than its competitors when imports were considered as well as exports, leaving Egypt and Greece behind. Yet, this RC index was estimated against exchange rates for 9 competing countries between 2008 and 2016. The results revealed that, cross sectional differences were visible in estimation of RC of Turkey and devaluation or valuation of currencies affect export performance as expected. When the same measurement was made for cherries market, Turkey again appeared as competitive. Only Poland was superior to Turkey in some specific years. However, estimation of revealed competitiveness of Turkey did not yield an interpretable result due to repetitive structure of competing country exchange rates, which are completely EU members. Consequently, the findings indicated that Turkey has advantages in grape and cherries markets. Yet, the share of these products in overall fruit exports and potential market lines should be extended. This is also necessary to cope with the exchange rate risks as well.

Keywords

• export competition,indices,grape,cherries,Turkey

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