Int'l financial bodies boost growth forecasts for Turkey

BERLIN

Despite pandemic-driven bottlenecks in the global supply chain, Turkey's rapid economic recovery, its progress in vaccinating its population against COVID-19, and its strong industrial production trends have resulted in international organizations revising their 2021 growth forecasts for the country.

Turkey's economy grew by 1.8% in 2020, even as the global economy was battered by the coronavirus pandemic, and has maintained this recovery momentum this year, especially with double-digit rises in industrial production.

According to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), the economy, which grew by 7.2% in the first quarter of 2021, grew by 21.7% over the second three months with the help of the base effect, enjoying its highest growth rate in the new series announced since 1999.

Turkey, along with China, was among the few countries that managed to expand its economy last year, becoming the country with the second-highest growth rate in the OECD after the U.K. in Q2 this year.

In August, calendar-adjusted industrial production in Turkey surged by 13.8% annually and by 5.4% on a monthly basis.

Analysts expect this upward trend to continue and have a positive effect on growth, with the possibility of bringing more upward growth forecast revisions in the future.

Leading international organizations have started, one after another, to revise their 2021 growth forecasts for Turkey amid the ongoing global economic recovery from the pandemic's economic fallout and progress in vaccination.

The OECD revised its economic growth projection for Turkey up by 2.7 percentage points, with the country's GDP expected to rise 8.4% in 2021.

Turkey is expected in 2021 to rank first among OECD countries in terms of growth and third among G20 countries after India and China.

The World Bank also boosted its forecast for Turkey's 2021 growth to 8.5%.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), for its part, raised its 2021 growth projection for the Turkish economy from 5.8% to 9% in the October 2021 issue of its World Economic Outlook Report published on Wednesday.

Keeping its growth expectation for the Turkish economy in 2022 the same at 3.3%, the IMF predicted unemployment in the country would decrease to 11% in 2022.