Foreign trade, tourism data due this week

ISTANBUL

Some key macroeconomic and sectoral data, including foreign trade, foreign tourist arrivals and the manufacturing capacity utilization rate, as well as business confidence, will be released this week.

The Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) will announce export, import and foreign trade deficit figures for the month of September on Oct. 27.

In August, exports rose 13.1 percent and imports registered an annual increase of 40 percent. The country’s foreign trade deficit, consequently, widened 160 percent from a year ago to $11.2 billion. In the first eight months of 2022, exports amounted to $166 billion, while the country’s foreign trade gap increased by 146 percent year-on-year to $73.4 billion.

Another key data due this week is the foreign tourist arrivals, which leaped 109 percent in January-August from the same period of 2021 to 29.3 million. On Oct. 27, TÜİK will also release tourism revenue statistics for the third quarter of this year.

On Oct. 25, the Central Bank’s regular survey on business morale for October will be out. In September, the real sector confidence index declined by 2.2 points from the previous month to 99.9, just a notch below the 100-mark separating optimism from pessimism among businesses. TÜİK will also announce the economic confidence index, which remained unchanged at 94.3 in September compared with August.

Also in the pipeline this week is the capacity utilization rate in the manufacturing sector in October. Manufacturing companies worked at 77.4 percent capacity in September, up from 76.7 percent in the previous month.