Turkish Maritime Sector Inventory Report

İMEAK Deniz Ticaret Odası needed an inventory showing the maritime sector’s economic value and employment together. Alongside maritime transport and ports, shipbuilding, fishing, aquaculture, tourism and marinas were also part of the picture.

Addressing these activities’ relationships with areas such as finance and insurance within the same framework would provide a more complete view of the sector’s place in the economy.

The initial plan was to collect information from DTO members online. However, potential delays in the inventory results showed that the project could not progress simply by waiting for these responses.

The need did not change. The approach to collecting data and performing calculations to address it was reconsidered.

How can the economic value and employment of maritime activities be calculated? How can data scattered across different activities and sources be brought together in an internationally accepted model?

The Oxford Economics Model and the Leontief Input-Output Model were used together. These methods established the calculation framework, and data from reliable sources was used to build an overall picture of the sector.

Face-to-face interviews, academic publications, UAB and DGM reports, TÜİK and SGK databases, DTO activity reports, publications from sector organizations and Clarkson Research sources were evaluated together.

The work shifted from an inventory approach based solely on member responses to a research process evaluating different sources within a shared calculation model.

This was a change in how the research was conducted. The source does not include a separately measured outcome concerning the organization’s teams’ daily behaviors.

The Turkish Maritime Sector Economic Value and Employment Inventory was produced. The report offered an assessment addressing the economic value and employment of different maritime activities together.

We do not present an unverified growth rate or claim of new employment here. The project’s output is a report and research framework for calculating the sector’s existing value.

A delay in data collection did not mean abandoning the research question. Rebuilding the model and sources made it possible to address the same need through a different route.

The report’s call to action continued this approach: developing new ideas to improve the accuracy of calculations and better understand the bigger picture.