In February Turkey’s exports posted 9.6% yoy growth reaching USD 16.0bn as imports also grew by 9.4% yoy to USD 19.3bn. Hence the resulting USD 3.3 bn foreign trade deficit stands 8.7% above last years.
Looking forward, the rate hikes and the TL depreciation in late March would boost export growth to double digits given the expected recovery in the EU while imports are likely to loose pace stemming from less consumption of imported consumer goods
In February 2021, while seasonally and calendar adjusted exports decreased by 1.9%, imports increased 1.1% compared with previous month.
In the first two months of the year, exports added to USD 31.0 bn posting 5.9% yoy increase and imports at USD 37.4 bn increased by 1.4% compared with January-February 2020. The foreign trade deficit decreased by 15.9% in January-February 2021 to USD 6.4 bn.
In February 2021, the share of manufacturing industries products in Turkey’s total exports stand at 94.2% as the share of agriculture, forestry and fishing exports is 3.6%. The ratio of intermediate goods in total imports was 75.1% in February 2021, while the share of capital goods and consumption goods in total imports were 13.7% and 10.9%, respectively.
In the first two months of 2021, Turkey’s main export destination was Germany with 9.4% share. Followed by USA with 5.7% share. Turkey’s top three import partners are Chine (11.6%) Russia (8.8%) and Germany (8.8%).