Turkish Trade Minister Mehmet Mus reported recently that Turkish exports in August hit yet another all-time monthly high for the eighth consecutive month, with the country hitting its annual target before the year has even ended.
Mus explained at a meeting in Gaziantep, a south-eastern province of Turkey, that foreign sales had jumped by 13.1% compared to previous years last month totalling 21.3 billion USD in total. The imports for Turkey rose even faster, ministerial data showed, jumping up 40.7% to 32.6 billion USD in August. Record sales have been achieved in exports every single month for the past 12 months.
A record 11.3 billion USD was recorded in August for the trade deficit, having surged by almost 162%, the same data showed. Surging import costs of energy have continued to widen the shortfall of the country. The deficit in the first eight months of 2022 was 73.4 billion USD, jumping up by 146.4%.
Mus continued by saying that energy imports represented around 27% of last month’s total imports in Turkey.
Concerns have been raised for the remaining months of the year, given the deteriorating condition of the world economy, which has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Turkey’s economic program, which is attempting to tackle the high inflation with their account surpluses, is being endangered by the global goods price increases due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, which started in February this year.
Data has shown that Turkish sales have risen by more than 18.3% compared with previous years during the first eight months of this year, culminating in 165.67 billion USD in total. Imports have also jumped by 40.7% in the same period of 2022, to a total of 239.13 billion USD.
In 2021, exports for Turkey ended at 225.4 billion USD, and now the government and Turkish economists are expecting this to top 250 billion USD by the end of the year 2022. Looking at the 12-month rolling exports, from August 2021 to August 2022, the Turkish exports had surpassed 250 billion USD in total.