Kayalar: Imports and exports to surpass goals
Posted by meb at April 15th, 2008
Foreign Trade Undersecretary Tuncer Kayalar has said year-end exports and imports will exceed the levels forecast in the government’s economic program.
He said imports, particularly due to rapidly increasing energy prices, are expected to hit $190 billion at the end of 2008, while exports are expected to total $125 billion. Kayalar, speaking with the Anatolia news agency on Monday, recalled that Turkey’s foreign trade volume had exceeded “a quarter trillion dollars” last year. Kayalar said growth in world economy and trade, overvaluation of the Turkish lira, the weakening dollar against the euro and soaring energy and commodity prices had all played an important role in Turkey’s foreign trade. He said they were expecting energy prices to continue to affect imports in 2008. To this end, he said they expect imports and exports to exceed the government’s economic program targets, which were $117 billion in exports and $182 billion in imports, at the end of 2008.
Kayalar said one of the major reasons for Turkey’s current account deficit is Turkey being totally reliant on imports for energy and increasing interest in capital good imports for industrial production while the Turkish lira is overvalued. The undersecretary said the weight of energy imports on the foreign trade deficit was increasing every year. He said energy imports were equal to 38 percent of the foreign trade deficit in 2000, while they had increased to 54 percent in 2007. Kayalar also said that according to foreign trade specialists’ calculations, apart from the direct effect caused by the rise in oil prices, a 10 percent jump in oil prices had also indirectly increased the cost of total imports by 2 percent.
Kayalar said that manufacturers increasingly prefer to import more investment goods in order to sustain their competitiveness thanks to the overvalued Turkish lira. He emphasized that a 10 percent rise in the real value of the Turkish lira had caused a 4 percent rise in imports. He said the Turkish lira appreciated by nearly 30 percent in 2007, compared to 2003, in real terms.
source: Today’s Zaman
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