One of the main goals of our Ministry is to increase the number of exporting companies across all economic sectors. To attain this goal, we launched a project to establish “Export Support Offices” (ESOs) within local chambers and commodity exchanges according to a protocol signed on November 13, 2018 between Ministry of Trade and the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB), the most widespread organization of our business world in the field.

The main function of these offices is to increase the export skills of Turkish companies (current and prospective) by transferring the knowledge and experience of the Ministry to the companies through the personnel working within the ESOs. Recently 79 offices in 60 provinces are delivering services to the companies.
 
The main functions of Export Support Offices are as follows;

• The Ministry aims to develop core export competencies and skills of local personnel within these offices through physical and online trainings on a wide range of issues including export & customs legislation, Eximbank loans, risk analysis in export, digital export platforms etc.
• Programs that bring together the experts of the Ministry and the local personnel are organized in order to provide opportunity to direct interaction among the experts. The programs allow exchange ideas, besides reflecting questions and problems to the Ministry.
• The Ministry provides trainer and document support to activities such as training foreign trade personnel, students and women entrepreneurs organized by the office.
• Locally unanswered questions and unresolved issues pertinent to exports are immediately forwarded to the Ministry by ESOs. Experts of the Ministry respond to those issues immediately.
• ESOs organize training, information sharing, awareness raising activities in the form of certificate programs and workshops on export. During these activities participants receive valuable insights about target market identification, finding potential importers, export legislation etc.  These activities do not only aim to inform the companies about export process but also introduce commercial and investment opportunities.
• ESOs personnel also visit companies in their premises in order to support them either for initiating or expanding export activities.
• ESOs design projects on issues such as increasing the export potential of their members and increasing the number of young exporters.
• Bilateral business meetings are organized for target markets by the ESOs.
• Companies are supported in identifying target market, export procedures, applied export market research, country reports etc.
• Delegations, webinars, online B2B events are organized for the target sectors of various countries.

 
See the list of ESOs.