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Turkish economy shrinks 7 percent in Q2
The Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) announced yesterday the gross domestic product (GDP) figures for the second quarter and thus for the first half of the year.
According to production-based GDP calculations, GDP was down 7 percent in the second quarter over the same period a year ago on constant prices, dropping to TL 23.5 billion.
With nominal prices, on the other hand, GDP was down by 4.4 percent in the given period to TL 228.8 billion.
Over the same period a year ago, GDP was up 17.8 percent for current prices and 2.8 percent higher for constant prices over Q2 of 2008.
In dollar terms and with nominal prices, the Turkish economy receded by 22.9 percent to $145.63 billion, TurkStat asserted.
The government initially envisaged that the economy would grow 4 percent during the year, but later revised this figure to a contraction of 3.6 percent, realizing that it was unavoidable for the economy to avoid a harsh blow from the global economic crisis.
As for the subsectors, the biggest contraction was witnessed in the construction industry, which shrunk by 21 percent. The main harbinger of consecutive growth performance in the economy for many years in the last decade, especially during the seven years prior to 2008, the construction business has now started to lose steam. Even recent reductions in mortgage interest rates seem not to be helping home sales increase again. In the second quarter of last year, when the overall economy was performing positively, construction was down by 5.2 percent.
The mining sector saw a sharp decline of 15.3 percent during the months of April, May and June this year. It had grown 7.7 percent in the same months of the previous year.
The wholesale and retail trade sector, which enjoyed a growth of 4.5 percent a year ago, contracted 15 percent in the last quarter. The rate of contraction was 8.7 percent for the overall manufacturing industry in the second quarter of 2009. The same industry had registered a positive 4.5 percent growth last year.
Among the sectors recording growth in the second quarter this year were the fishing sector (8.4 percent), agricultural, hunting and forestry sector (6.6 percent) and financial intermediary companies (7.5 percent).
For expenditure-based GDP figures, the share of consumption expenditures of the state in overall expenditures -- as of the second quarter -- edged down, dropping from 11.2 percent to 10.7 percent. However, despite this percentage decrease, the quantity of the state's expenditures displayed an increase, from TL 2.34 billion to TL 2.5 billion. The share of total consumptions by resident and non-resident households over the total expenditures was slightly down in Q2, from 77.1 percent to 76.9 percent over the same quarter a year ago. The quantity, however, was up from TL 16.2 billion to TL 18 billion.
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