Turkey Trade Deficit Widens

Turkey’s foreign trade deficit rose to $4.95 billion in April with a 16.7% year-on-year increase, official data showed on May 31, Andolu Agency reported. While the country’s imports surged 9.9% year-on-year to $17.7 billion, exports rose 7.4% to $12.8 billion, according to data from the Turkish Statistics Institute. In April, exports coverage imports was 72.2% while it was 73.8% in April 2016. In the first four months, the deficit was $17.5 billion, with a 7.1% increase compared to the same period in 2016. Compared to the same month of the previous year, exports to the EU-28 increased 2.2% in April, rising from $5.65 billion to $5.77 billion. The proportion of EU countries, however, declined to 45% in April from 47.3% in the same month of 2016. Germany again became Turkey’s largest export market (with $1.1 billion in April), followed by the UAE ($1.02 billion), Iraq ($857 million) and the United Kingdom ($737 million).