In the first 11 months of 2022, Turkiye’s exports amounted to $231 billion, rising 13.9 percent from the same period of last year, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) have shown.
The country’s export increased by 2.1 percent in November from a year ago to stand at $21.9 billion.
Imports grew 14 percent on an annual basis to reach $30.7 billion.
Consequently, the country’s foreign trade balance posted a deficit of $8.76 billion, increasing by nearly 61 percent compared with November 2021.
The export-import coverage ratio declined from 79.8 percent a year ago to 71.4 percent last month.
Excluding energy and gold imports, Turkiye’s imports exhibited an annual increase of 0.4 percent to $20.3 billion.
“The foreign trade surplus, excluding energy products and non-monetary gold, was $175 million in November. Excluding energy products and non-monetary gold imports,the export-import coverage ratio was 100.9 percent,” TÜİK said.
As was the case in the previous months, Germany was Turkiye’s largest export market in November. Data from TÜİK showed that exports to Germany amounted to $1.86 billion. The U.S. ranked second in the top exports market list at $1.45 billion, followed by Iraq at $1.3 billion.
Exports to Russia and the U.K. amounted to $1.16 billion and $1 billion, respectively.
The share of the top five countries in Turkiye’s overall exports was 31.2 percent in November.
The manufacturing sector accounted for 94.2 percent of all exports, while the agriculture sector’s share was 3.7 percent and the mining and quarry’s 1.6 percent.
Imports from Russia stood at $4.68 billion, China came second at $3.1 billion. Last month Turkiye imported $2.24 billion worth of goods from Germany and imports from Switzerland amounted to $2.2 billion.
Imports from Italy were $1.2 billion.
On a seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis, exports grew 0.4 percent in November from the previous month, while imports fell 0.4 percent.
In the January-October period, the country’s imports increased by 36.6 percent to reach $331 billion.
Consequently, the foreign trade deficit widened by 153 percent in the first 11 months from a year ago to $99.8 billion.
In the latest edition of its Medium-Term Program, the government said that the foreign trade deficit is expected to be $105 billion at the end of 2022. It forecasts that the trade deficit will shrink to $80 billion next year as it expects the energy import bill to decline from an estimated $103.5 billion this year to $85 billion in 2023.