Turkey registered the highest monthly exports ever in April, official data showed Thursday, while its trade deficit nearly doubled mainly due to soaring energy import costs, Trend reports citing Daily Sabah.
Exports surged 24.6% year-over-year last month to $23.4 billion (TL 347.86 billion), Trade Minister Mehmet Mush said. “This is the highest ever monthly export figure,” he noted.
It followed monthly records in the first three months of the year, a period marked by a widening trade deficit fueled by increasing energy costs.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent global commodity prices soaring, threatening to impact Turkey’s new economic program that aims to record a current account surplus.
Imports rose 35% on annual basis to $29.5 billion last month, with total trade volume surging over 30% to $52.8 billion, Muş told a meeting in the capital Ankara to announce the preliminary trade figures.
The trade deficit jumped 98% year-over-year in April to $6.1 billion, the data showed, for a total of $32.5 billion in the first four months of 2022.
Energy imports soared 134.1% year-over-year to $7.7 billion, slightly down from $8.4 billion in March, taking a total to $32.7 billion from January through April – equal to an annual rise of 173.1%.
“As a matter of fact, excluding energy, export-import covering ratio increased to more than 100%,” Muş said. “We see that the global increases in commodity prices, especially oil and natural gas, continue to be effective in the increasing January-April imports.”
Energy imports accounted for a $20.7 billion out of the total $33.2 billion increase in imports from January through April of 2022, Muş said.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has lifted energy prices all over the world, a situation that Muş said has also affected Turkey and has created upward pressure on import prices.