ISTANBUL (Turkey), November 28 (SeeNews) – Turkey's trade deficit narrowed by 18.2% year-on-year to $67.61 billion (54.31 billion euro) in the ten months through October, the country's statistical institute said Friday.
Exports rose 5.6% on the year to $131.39 billion and imports decreased by 3.9% to $199.0 billion in the January-October period, the institute said in a statement.
In October alone, Turkey’s trade deficit narrowed 15.8% year-on-year to $6.25 billion as exports increased 7.3% to $12.93 billion and imports decreased 1.5% to $19.19 billion.
Germany was Turkey's biggest export market in October, followed by the UK, Iraq and Italy. China was the biggest importer in Turkey, followed by Germany, Russia and Italy.
The October foreign trade deficit figure beat the consensus and the $6.7 billion estimate of Erste, the bank said in a short report on Friday.
In seasonally-adjusted terms and excluding gold, exports decreased by 0.9% month-on-month, while imports increased by 2.4% in October. “The data, combined with the non-gold and non-energy intermediate goods imports, suggest that industrial production remained strong in October,” Erste noted.
“In light of the fresh data, we calculate that the C/A [current account] deficit could narrow to $1.7 billion in October from $3.3 billion a year ago. This could be the smallest C/A deficit since October 2012 and may lower the 12-month rolling C/A deficit to $45.2 billion (5.6% of GDP down from 5.8%),” Erste analysts said.
($ = 0.803 euro)