Turkey’s foreign trade gap declines due to oil plunge, rise in gold exports

Turkey’s exports increased by 9.9 percent to $12.1 billion and imports declined by 3.8 percent to $17.1 billion in May compared to the same month of 2015. 

The Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) on June 1 announced the country’s May exports as $10.8 billion, just a 0.1 percent year-one-year increase, as the association’s figures did not include precious stone exports. 

The difference between the ministry data and TİM data was mainly causes by gold exports. 

According to the ministry data, Turkey exported motorized vehicles the most with $1.6 billion in May, followed by precious stone exports worth $1.4 billion and machinery exports worth over $1 billion. 

Turkey’s energy costs also continued to decline, as the country imported $10.6 billion worth of energy resources in the first five months of the year, although this figure was over $17 billion in the same period of 2015. 

Turkey made the highest volume of exports to Britain in May, followed by Germany and Iran, the data showed. 

Turkey’s foreign trade gap declined 21.3 percent to $21.3 billion in the first five months of the year, with around a 4.2 percent decline in exports and 9.5 percent decline in imports.