of macroeconomic stability. achievements made both in the fight against inflation and in easing the budget deficit and public debt were only made possible with great effort and sacrifices. however, the road ahead calls for more effort. we have to use our resources more efficiently in order to converge with the developed countries. to that end, investments in human capital aimed at improving the quality of the labor force in our country should be intensified and competition should be enhanced through effective regulations and implementations, especially in the goods market. the competition authority is one of the main institutional building blocks of the “ open economy growth model ” implemented in the period after 1980 and is based on strengthening the market economy. competition policies and price stability, which is the core objective of the central bank, are strongly related. in an environment where competition conditions are ensured, monopolistic market behaviors will not be possible. simplifying the entry and exit of firms to the various sectors and increasing transparency are the main factors preventing pricing habits that are based on a high profit margin. additionally, due to pressures from both domestic and foreign competition, firms choose to implement strategies with the aim of increasing productivity, which in turn triggers innovation and technological development and contributes to the acceleration of the potential growth rate of our country. if firms increase profitability through measures that decrease costs instead of increasing prices, our country can reach higher growth rates in an environment of low inflation. various instruments can be utilized to establish an effective competition environment in an economy. the most outstanding of these can be listed as : establishing macroeconomic stability, liberalization of foreign trade, facilitating firms ’ – including companies owned by nonresidents – entry into and exit from sectors, easing tax and other public burdens, establishing an effectively - operating regulation - supervision structure, preventing unregistered economic activity, ensuring transparency and preventing monopolistic behaviors by reinforcing the regulatory and supervisory institutional structure, ensuring transparency in the public purchases of goods and services and ensuring an effectively - operating judicial system. significant progress has been made in these areas recently. however, there still is more to be done. i believe that the concept of competition should be explored not only using general indicators but also at the level of sub - items. achievements have been made in lifting the hurdles before the liberalization of foreign trade and entry / exit of new firms to the sectors. however, the studies conducted by the central bank show that the foreign competition pressure exerted by imports is not enough to reduce the price - cost margin in

oriented towards domestic markets have been made, particularly during the process of turkey ’ s accession to the eu. these regulations aim to ensure the integration of the turkish economy with the eu on a sectoral basis and to strengthen the competitive power of our firms. it is not merely the relatively low labor costs that allow our firms to assume a position as important actors in international markets. providing a stable macroeconomic structure for our economy is a must, but it is not enough. the qualified manpower of our country should be increased, our firms should be institutionally open to new developments and our industry should also adopt a structure that is not only demanding but also producing technology. to this end, it is of great importance to implement well - designed microeconomic reforms decisively. competition policy is certainly one of the cornerstones of these reforms. encouraging the entry of new firms equipped with the latest technology and institutional structure into the market constitutes one of the pillars of a well - designed competition policy, whereas the other pillar is to facilitate the elimination of sluggish firms, which have difficulty adapting to changes in a competitive environment, firms will begin to allocate more resources to activities focusing on productivity gains and enriching the product range. it is clear that the ability to access, produce and use information is very important nowadays. in such an environment, only those firms, which closely follow the changes in consumer tendencies, have flexible organizational structures, are institutionalized, are ready to cooperate with other firms and their research units, and draw up their resource allocation plans with a long - term perspective aimed at enhancing the production capacity, will prevail in the arena of global competition. to sum up, in the recent period, important steps have been taken to create an efficient competition environment in the turkish economy. indicators such as the growth rate, the increase in productivity, direct foreign capital inflows and the number of new firms reflect the outcomes of these steps. however, there are still many reforms and regulations to be made. in this framework, it is important that policies regarding the enhancement of the competition environment go beyond general implementations and are established by taking into account the sub - items and their interaction with each other. there is no doubt that information sharing and cooperation among public institutions make up an important part of these policies. naturally, the turkish competition authority and the central bank are among these public institutions. strong relations among public institutions including the last two are critical for the central bank to reach price stability and for turkey to attain a