CELEBI GROUND HANDLING 2023 ANNUAL REPORT

2 Çelebi Ground Handling Inc. 2023 Annual Report MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Valuable customers, partners, and employees, Çelebi Ground Handling has achieved the position of our country’s leading airport ground services provider with its successful activities over a period of nearly seventy years. Our Company’s success is based on our business strategies shaped under the guidance of our long years of knowledge and experience, our proactive behavior by closely monitoring the markets, and our ability to pioneer the change. There has been a slowdown in global economic activity in 2023. The year 2023 has been a period in which many positive and negative factors interacted in the global economy in which our country, and therefore our Company, is largely integrated. The global economy, which started 2023 with a very risky outlook, demonstrated significant resilience despite regional and sectoral divergences and managed to emerge from the recession environment at the beginning of the year by showing a slow but above-expected growth performance. Simultaneous monetary tightening around the world, geopolitical tensions, weak confidence environment and slowing global trade due to structural changes in the supply chain have put pressure on growth. The Russia-Ukraine war, which continues in 2023, the comprehensive sanctions imposed on Russia by western countries, and the Russian government’s announcement of withdrawal from the Grain Corridor Agreement in July, are among the global geopolitical risks. It has been observed that inflation in many countries has moved away from the peak levels it reached in 2022, due to the impact of interest rate increases initiated by central banks to combat inflation all over the world and the tightening in financial conditions. During the year, it was also observed that energy and commodity prices eased as the supply chain problems that occurred during the pandemic period covering the years 2019-2022 were resolved and supply-side problems were alleviated. In the Global Economic Outlook Report published in January 2024, the IMF predicted that global economic growth, which was 3.5% in 2022, will be registered as 3.1% in 2023, with a partial slowdown due to the greater than expected resilience of the USA and some major developing economies and the support in China. The IMF also states that it predicts a similar growth of 3.1% for 2024 and a growth of 3.2% in 2025. Predictions regarding growth in global goods trade have been revised downwards. It is seen that the slowdown in global trade in 2023 will cover many countries and a wide range of products. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has made a downward revision in its forecasts for the growth in global goods trade in 2023 due to the continuation of the recession that started in the fourth quarter of 2022. According to WTO data, the contraction in global trade in the January-September period compared to the same period of the previous year was 5.6%. It is predicted that global trade volume will decrease by 4.5% in 2023, falling below USD 31 trillion, and will increase by 3.3% in 2024 with slow but stable economic growth. It seems that geopolitical developments have replaced economic concerns in the expectations for 2024. In 2024, the global economy is expected to maintain its resilience, but vulnerabilities that need to be managed effectively will continue to exist. It is estimated that factors such as policies that will bring a permanent solution to inflation, reforms to improve governance, facilitate regulations and reduce trade barriers, and global cooperation against the climate crisis will maintain their importance on the global economy in the coming period. The Turkish economy demonstrated a strong growth performance in 2023 despite the global slowdown. Many negative developments, such as the slowdown in the global economy, the weakening of the main export markets and the major earthquake disaster at the beginning of the year, were among the factors affecting the Turkish economy in 2023. Despite these developments, the Turkish economy, which recorded an economic growth performance close to its long-term average with the support of consumption expenditures, grew by 4% in the first quarter of 2023. In the economy that grew by 3.9% in the second quarter of 2023, consumption expenditures continued to be the locomotive of growth, supported by the recovery in investment expenditures.