Türkiye’s foreign trade deficit narrowed by 3.2% year-over-year in 2023, official data showed on Wednesday, while the December gap decreased by 37.8% from a year earlier.
The shortfall dropped to $105.99 billion, decreasing from $109.5 billion in 2022, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data showed.
In 2023, exports rose 0.6% to $255.78 billion and imports shrank 0.5% to $361.77 billion, according to the data.
Germany received the highest amount of Turkish goods at $21.09 billion, while Russia was the biggest source of imports at $45.6 billion.
The share of manufacturing industries products in overall exports was 94.2% last year.
The share of high tech in manufacturing industries products was up by 23.1% to 3.8% and that of medium high tech rose by 8.4% to 36.5% in 2023 versus 2022.
In December, exports grew 0.4% to $23 billion and imports slowed 11% from the previous year’s $29 billion, with the deficit amounting to $6.04 billion, TurkStat said.
The data also showed Türkiye’s energy import bill dropped by 18.7% year-over-year to $6.65 billion in December. The figure is down from $8.18 billion in the same month of 2022.
At $6.65 billion, energy accounted for 22.63% of the overall import figures in December.
Crude oil imports showed a 28.04% increase to 2.90 million tons, compared to 2.26 million tons in December 2022.
dailysabah.com