Turkey’s current-account deficit widened to $3.99 billion in May from $3.65 billion in the same month last year, as imports rose faster than exports, the Turkish central bank said Friday, Dow Jones reported. The deficit was slightly above a forecast of $3.64 billion gap in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal. The country’s annualized current-account gap widened to $44.6 billion in May, or to about 5.6% of gross domestic product, from $44.3 billion in April. Turkey’s deficit in the January-May period shrank to $18.5 billion from $20.4 billion in the same period of 2014, the balance of payments data showed. Following the central bank data, the lira slightly moved to trade at TRY2.6666 against the dollar, compared with TRY2.6672 before the data. The yield on two-year government bonds was steady at 9.61%. Turkey’s BIST-100 index was up 0.7%.
