Turkish economy grows official 3.2% in first quarter

ISTANBUL - Agence France-Presse

The Turkish economy grew by 3.2 percent in the first quarter, marking an expected slowdown after spectacular expansion in the previous year, official data revealed on Monday.
 
Output expanded by 3.2 percent in the first three months of 2012, pointing to a halving of the growth rate, data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TUIK) showed.
 
Turkey, a country of about 73 million people and the world's 17th-biggest economy, expanded by 8.5 percent in 2011, and 8.9 percent in 2010. But its expansion had already started slowing down by the last quarter of 2011, with a growth rate of 5.2 percent.
 
For 2012, the government expects to turn in around 4.0-percent annual growth, hoping to achieve a soft landing due to the effects of the eurozone crisis.