One of the world’s top 10 food producers, Turkey has a developed food and beverage industry, which both supplies a population of over 80mn and exports. The food and beverage processing sector accounts for 12.7% of Turkey’s total manufacturing industry, according to data published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Turkish households spent TRY 467bn on food, drinks and tobacco in 2017, which represented 24.4% of their annual budget. Solid GDP and disposable income growth, alongside rising urbanisation rates and a young population, is fuelling consumption and thus supporting the development of the sector. However, persistent high inflation and a depreciating local currency are eroding the purchasing power of the population, implying challenges for the consumer outlook.

Demand for the products and services of the Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare sector has been growing strongly in Thailand over the past few years. Thailand has one of the most rapidly aging societies in Asia. The country’s rising affluence has also been contributing towards an obesity epidemic, and both these factors have shifted towards a higher non-communicable disease (“NCD”) burden in Thailand compared with infectious diseases in recent years. The population’s growing healthcare demands has been straining the public healthcare system which is largely funded by public taxation. This has resulted in strong growth of the private healthcare system which caters to the needs of more affluent Thais as well as an increasing medical tourist base.

Thailand is the largest producer of four-wheel vehicles in the ASEAN region and the 12th largest vehicle producer in the world. The strength of the industry lies in the combination of a long-standing presence of Japanese car manufacturers and solid domestic infrastructure. Moreover, the Thai industry has positioned itself as a regional export hub. Motor vehicle exports, including motorcycles, accounted for 8.3% of the total value of Thai exports in 2017. Export destinations showed a healthy level of diversification, reducing the vulnerability of the Thai industry to the economic cycle of clients. The next step for the Thai industry to maintain its regional leadership is to enhance the production of electric vehicles (EVs).

The Polish metal processing sector is the 8th biggest in Europe and the 18th biggest in the world. It constitutes 0.5% of the country’s GDP and its exports account for 9.4% of the country’s total exports. The sector is dominated by the production of pig iron, crude steel and basic steel products, which were responsible for 93% of the total basic metal volume produced in 2016. The sector employs over 60,000 people or around 0.41% of the country’s total employment. The biggest trading partner is Germany with a share of over 25% in both imports and exports of metals. The metal processing sector is dominated by one big player ArcelorMittal Poland, which achieved 28% of the total country’s sales in 2016.

The retail sector has been the main driver of Poland's sustained economic growth in the last several years. It is a reflection of the scale of the country's improvement in terms of income levels, job security and overall quality of life. The GVA of the total trade sector as classified by the Statistics Office came to around 15.7% of GDP in 2017. The retail sector employs around 18% of the country's workforce and the value of retail sales was equal to around 40% of Poland’s GDP in 2016.

Due to the focus on traditional banking products and the austere financial supervision, the Polish banking system has weathered down the crises of the last two decades very well and remains well capitalised and non-volatile. Still, Poland is viewed as underbanked according to euro-zone standards, although the banking sector plays a very important role for the Polish economy - its assets hovered around 90% of GDP in 2017. Poland's 35 commercial banks employ over 164,000 persons, with wages significantly higher than the country average.

The GVAs of the Philippines’ real estate and construction sectors grew steadily between 2013 and 2017, reaching PHP 1,941bn for Construction and PHP 2,085bn for Real Estate and Other Business Activities in the latter year. The good performance of these sectors was mostly the result of healthy domestic demand for residential and office space, alongside government-backed infrastructure development programmes. A combination of relatively low property prices and growing incomes, parallel to urbanisation and a rise in modern lifestyles centred on nuclear families, has driven demand in the housing segment. The office segment has been pushed forward by the rapid development of IT-BPO* activities in the country, and by booming tourism, which needs more shopping malls, gaming centres, and entertainment facilities to maintain its positive trajectory. IT-BPO and tourism are expected to be the major drivers of real estate growth for the foreseeable future.

Latin America is well integrated in the global automotive supply chain, being an important manufacturing and export hub for motor vehicles – the legacy of active government policies for the development of domestic production and comprehensive free trade agreements. In 2017, the region accounted for 7.5% of global motor vehicle output and exported vehicles for a record-high USD 81.5bn, mainly destined to countries in the Americas and Europe, but also to Africa and Asia. Moreover, the relatively young and growing population, which reached 653mn people at end-2017, the rising purchasing power of households, and the government focus on development of the transport infrastructure have turned Latin America into one of the fastest growing new vehicle markets in the world, absorbing 6.3% of the global vehicle sales in 2017.

The oil and gas sector plays an important role in Indonesia’s economy, generating 5.1% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and earning nearly a tenth of export revenues in 2017. The sector was responsible for 5% of the overall central government budget revenue in 2017, while state subsidies accounted for 4.9% of total central government expenditures. Indonesia is the secondbiggest oil producer in the Asia Pacific region and the third-largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporting country in the world.

The Czech automotive sector’s GVA represents slightly over 5% of the country’s GDP. According to the Czech Automotive Industry Association (SAP), car manufacturers make up a quarter of the country's industrial output and 22% of its exports. Motor vehicle manufacturing directly contributes 9% to total economic output. The country is the fifth largest passenger car and the second largest bus producer in Europe. The Czech brand Skoda was the tenth bestselling passenger car (in terms of new registrations) in Europe in 2017. The sector also employed around 168,000 people in 2016, while indirectly it could provide employment to as many as 400,000 people.