In his written statement, Ramazan Bingöl, Chairman of the All Restaurants and Tourism Association (TÜRES), noted that predictability and the share of regular income in the sector should be increased in order to balance food prices in line with Turkey’s inflation targets.
Emphasizing that increasing the daily meal fee exemption amount will contribute to the welfare of employees and the vitality of the food and beverage sector, Bingöl explained that the meal aid given in cash was distributed to other areas and that they were negatively affected by this situation.
Bingöl noted that, according to their research, most of the meal amounts given in cash were used in areas unrelated to the food and beverage industry and made the following evaluations:
“Many businesses that have lost regular customers due to cash meal aid in the last two years and could not replace them, had to increase their prices at regular intervals because they could not cope with the increasing costs. As a result, with the chain effect, pricing behavior in our sector deteriorated and informality increased. The food and beverage sector is labor-intensive. sector.
Every 20 new permanent customers allows the employment of 1 new employee. For this reason, it is important to increase the regular income of businesses in the food and beverage sector. For this purpose, the meal fee exemption amount should be increased to at least 300 lira per day, taking into account the economic conditions that will occur next year, and the meal aid given to employees in cash should be made available to our sector by filling the legal gaps. “In this way, tens of thousands of young people will have the opportunity to work with the additional orders that will be provided and the cash meal money that will return to our sector.”
