ANKARA: Turkey’s current-account deficit narrowed for a ninth month in April as the cost of imported energy fell. The shortfall in the current account, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, narrowed to $2.96 billion in April from $3.86 billion a year earlier, Turkey’s central bank said in a statement on Friday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 13 analysts called for a $3.4 billion gap.
The annualized gap has been shrinking since August as lower oil prices reduced Turkey’s energy imports bill. Imports of mineral fuels, which include purchases of crude oil, declined 33 percent to $2 billion in April from a year earlier, according to the state statistics institute.
The current-account deficit is expected to widen to 4.7 percent of gross domestic product at the end the year from around 4.5 percent in 2015, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Investors track the gap because Turkey relies on capital inflows to finance it, leaving the economy vulnerable to sudden changes in sentiment toward the nation’s assets. The lira weakened after the data and was trading 0.5 percent lower at 2.9062 per dollar at 10:12 a.m. in Istanbul.
