Trade gap narrows on less demand

Bloomberg

The trade gap contracted to $2.54 billion from $6.5 billion in the year-earlier period, the Turkish Statistical Institute, or TurkStat, said on its Web site Friday.

Turkey’s economy contracted 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. It probably shrank by at least 10 percent in the first three months of this year, central bank Governor Durmuş Yılmaz said on April 30. A slump in energy prices is also helping to reduce the cost of imports.

"We’ve seen a very serious contraction in the deficit as the economy slowed," said Hakan Aklar, economist for Ak Yatırım in Istanbul, who forecast a gap of $2.6 billion. "Going forward we’ll see it widening on a monthly basis because we’re already seeing some signs of a slight, slow recovery in import demand."