Avrupa Birliği'nin uyum açısından Türkiye'nin şeker üretim ve ticaret politikaları
Özet
This thesis analysis the Turkish sugar sector as a whole and provides forecasts of the possible impacts that may shape up the sector under alternative scenarios of Turkey's membership to the European Union. First, the structure of the sector, from the sugar-beet production to the manufactured final products have been considered with a review of the existing literature on the subject and analysed at length using the most up-to-date data. In the second stage, statistics on sugarbeet yields and production as well as sugar policies adopted in Turkey have been compared with those of the EU member countries. In the third stage, the parameters of a partial equilibrium model with nine equations and nine endogenous variables, for the Turkish sugar sector, covering sugarbeet and sugar production, sugar demand and foreign trade, have been statistically estimated and tested. Using the model and past observations on the exogenous variables, backward predictions were made for the calibration of the model. In the fourth stage, forcasts were developed and interpreted for the endogenous variables, given the future trends for the explanatory variables, first as a base solutions where Turkey is not assumed to become a member, next under three different scenarios and two sub-scenarios regarding the timing of Turkey's membership to the EU. Finally, problems that the sector would face in the event of membership are presented and discussed and policy implementations that may be derived from the findings under the alternative scenarios are evaluated. Results indicate that the sector will inevitably reduce its production and market share, once the system is totally exposed to the international competition, particularly in the fields and sugar manufacturing facilities where the level of productivity can.not compete costwise. The new market conditions with competition will force the small scale production and marketing firms to merge for larger volums in order to take adavantage from the scale-economies, adopt the yield increasing sugar beet production technologies for cost reduction, plant high-sugar yielding beet varieties and upgrade technologies in the manufacturing facilities for higher sugar extraction processes. Otherwise, the ever increasing demand for sugar in the country will have to be supplied through imports in increasing quantities under a totally liberalized sugar market. With the limited amount of data available, it is possible to make a rough estimate of the probable magnitude of decline in the Turkish sugar production. Given that the Turkish sugar sector is open to competition, an estimated 40% reduction in the real sugarbeet price is expected. Based on the elasticity 0.72 of sugarbeet production with respect to sugarbeet price, the lower price is expected to bring about a 1/3 reduction in the sugarbeet production. With this amount of sugarbeet production the total sugar to be produced within the country will probably stabilize at a level between 1.5 and 1.7 million tons.