ANKARA: Foreign trade deficit increased by 13.2 percent in October compared to the same month of the previous year as exports decreased by three percent and imports increased by 0.5 percent, according to data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (Turkstat) on Wednesday.
Turkish lira’s loss of value against the U.S. dollar in recent months was a key factor dragging down the value of exports, while increasing the gap between total exports and imports value, leading to a major rise in foreign trade deficit. Exports were $12.841 million and imports were $17.004 billion in October, with the foreign trade deficit increasing to $4.164 billion. Export import coverage rate was 75.5 percent, decreasing from 78.3 percent in October 2015. Seasonally and calendar adjusted exports increased by 2.5 percent while imports decreased by 1.7 percent compared to the previous month. Calendar adjusted exports decreased by 0.3 percent while imports increased by 1.1 percent compared to October 2015. Exports to the EU-28, Turkey’s largest export market, decreased by 0.8 percent from $6.262 billion to $6.211 billion. Exports to EU countries made up 48.4 percent of total exports in October 2016 while it was 47.3 percent in October 2015.
The main destination for Turkish exports was Germany with $1.308 billion, followed by the U.K. with $1.049 billion, Iraq with $774 million and Italy with $739 million. China was the top source of Turkey’s imports with $2.214 billion, followed by Germany with $1.757 billion, Russia with $1.204 billion and Italy with $850 million. The ratio of manufacturing industries products in total exports was 92.9 percent in October. The ratio of high-technology products in manufacturing industries was 3.7 percent, while medium-high-technology products’ share stood at 33.1 percent. Manufacturing industries’ products made up 85.4 percent of total imports, of which 16.1 percent were high-technology products and 43.6 percent were medium-high-technology products.
