Turkey Slashes Foreign Trade Deficit By Almost Half In September

Turkey's foreign trade deficit fell 47.5% on an annual basis to $2.5 billion in September, according to official figures released on Wednesday.

The country's exports and imports saw an annual rise of 30% and 11.9% to reach $20.78 billion and $23.3 billion, respectively, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) reported.

Excluding the energy and gold trade, Turkey's exports and imports were $19.96 billion and $19.6 billion, respectively.

"Foreign trade surplus, excluding energy products and non-monetary gold, was $1.38 billion in September 2021," TurkStat said.

In September, the ratio of manufacturing industry products in overall exports was 94.6%, followed by agriculture-forestry-fishing with 2.9% and mining-quarrying with 1.9%.

The share of high-tech products in the manufacturing industry products was 2.8% in September.

"The ratios of intermediate goods, capital goods, and consumer goods in total imports were 78%,12.9%, 9%, respectively," the institute noted.

In September, Germany was the main export destination for Turkey with $1.7 billion and China was the main import partner with $2.9 billion.

In the first nine months of 2021, Turkey's exports grew 35.9% on a yearly basis to hit $160.95 billion, while imports were up 23.7% to $193.3 billion.

The trade balance during the January-September period saw a deficit of $32.3 billion, a 14.6% decrease from the corresponding period last year.​​​​​​​ -