Gap not narrowing despite slow growth

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

At a time when Turkey’s growth rate has halved, the current account deficit has not improved accordingly, which is a continuing concern, Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey President Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu said.

Both trade and industry are in a slowdown as the industrial production index and manufacturing industry capacity utilization rates show, Hisarcıklıoğlu told Anatolia news agency in yesterday’s interview.

 “This shows that 2012 growth might be under medium-term program expectations and even reaching 3 percent growth might be hard,” he said.

This year facts accepted as true have become questionable and the economies that used to look strong had problems, the business leader said.

Economic recession affects cash flow in the market adversely also, therefore bad loans and dud checks in the market increased markedly, he added.

As the result of the absence of an efficient industry and energy policy, the economy has become dependent on imported intermediate goods and energy sources, touching the highest level, the chairman said.

“Sustaining rapid growth will be difficult as long as this issue is not solved,” he said, forecasting that the unemployment rate would not fall due to the moderate growth.

Hisarcıklıoğlu suggested that 2013 might offer a good opportunity for the government to
handle structural change such as tax and employment market reforms since there is no political election.