Turkey's foreign trade deficit jumped 153.5% year-on-year in November to $5.033 billion according to the general trade system, data from the country's statistics institute showed on Thursday.
Turkey's exports fell 0.9% and imports climbed 15.9% compared with November 2019, the institute said. In the first 11 months of the year, the trade deficit climbed 82.5% to $45.344 billion.
Since mid-2018, year-on-year growth has averaged roughly 0.5% due to a roller-coaster of recession, strong recovery and another deep contraction in the second quarter of 2020, when the economy was mostly shuttered to curb COVID-19.
Before that, steady annual growth of around 5% economic growth that propelled Erdogan to five straight election wins, the last in 2018. But since then, the lira has halved in value.
This year alone, it has lost nearly 20% against the dollar, the second worst performance among emerging market currencies – despite rallying in the last two months, since Erdogan overhauled his economic leadership and pledged a new, market-friendly era.
Measures to curb COVID-19, which has killed nearly 21,000 people in Turkey, have slashed key tourism revenues, and record levels of dollarisation in a country heavily reliant on imports, have exacerbated the chronic trade deficit.
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