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February sees foreign trade deficit soar by 418.4 pct
In February of last year, exports and imports totaled $8.44 billion and $9.08 billion, respectively, creating a foreign trade deficit of $640 million, less than one-fourth of the February 2010 figure. Correspondingly, Turkey’s export/import coverage ratio declined from 92.9 percent to 71.5 percent during the same period.
TurkStat attributed the drastic fall in overall exports in February to the decrease in exports of processed and semi-processed gold from $1.64 billion to $161 million.
Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan, assessing the results, noted that “if we keep gold out of the calculations, we see that exports increased by $1.36 billion, or 20 percent, in February over the same month of the preceding year.”
The export of unprocessed gold might be seen as a “capital movement,” Çağlayan said, and added that the manufacturing sector, which has a significant impact on unemployment and economic growth, enjoyed an increase in exports in February. “The upward trend seen in exports by the manufacturing sector, which started in October of last year, continues,” he stated. The minister said all sectors except agriculture, aluminum, textiles, furniture, plastics and plastic goods, mineral fuel and oil, iron and steel and electrical machinery and tools saw an increase in exports in the second month of the year.
According to the TurkStat report, the year-on-year rise in exports was 53.4 percent for motor vehicles, 20.9 percent for boilers and machinery and 20.3 percent for knitted and crocheted goods and accessories in February.
Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) President Mehmet Büyükekşi also said there was a difference between the TİM figures and the indices released by TurkStat, mainly due to inclusion of “unprocessed gold” in TurkStat’s statistics. “If we remove this good from the data, exports rose by 19.8 percent in February,” he said in a written statement released yesterday.
During the first two months of the year, exports decreased by 0.8 percent to $16.19 billion, while imports rose by 26.2 percent to $23.16 billion. The January-February period saw a foreign deficit of $6.97 billion, a 242.4 percent surge over the first two months of last year. During the same period, the export/import coverage ratio fell from 88.9 percent to 69.9 percent.
Turkey’s exports to EU countries, which suffered the most from the global financial crisis, approached their pre-crisis levels in February, increasing by 28.6 percent compared to the same month of 2009. Some 48.2 percent of total exports went to the EU market, up from 37 percent in February 2009. Germany imported the highest quantity of goods from Turkey, amounting to $865 million, representing a 22.9 percent year-on-year increase. Italy came in second with $561 million, followed by France and the UK with $526 million and $478 million, respectively.
In February 2010, Russia was the biggest exporter to Turkey, with exports totaling $1.38 billion, while Turkey received $1.2 billion in imports from Germany in the same period. China exported $1.1 billion worth of goods to Turkey in February. The TurkStat data also showed that Turkey’s intermediate goods imports, which account for 72.9 percent of total imports, rose by 26.9 percent in the January-February period compared to the first two months of 2009. Turkey spent $16.88 billion on the purchase of intermediate goods during this period.
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