Turkey's Foreign Trade Deficit At Its 5 Month-High Level In May

- Turkey's foreign trade deficit rose by 6.1 percent on annual basis to 6.75 billion dollars in May, its highest level in 2015, according to the Foreign Trade Statistics data released by Turkstat on Tuesday.

Total exports fell by 18.8 percent to 11.11 billion dollars in May on annual basis, while the imports fell by 14.4 percent to 17.87 billion dollars over the same period. Exports coverage of imports fell to 62.2 percent in May, down from 65.5 percent in May 2014.

Seasonally and calendar adjusted exports decreased by 13.6 percent while imports remain the same compared with previous month. Calendar adjusted exports decreased by 16.4 percent, imports decreased by 11.4 percent compared with May 2014.

Turkey's five-month exports fell by 8.4 percent to 61.6 billion dollars against in the same period of 2014, while imports fell by 10.6 percent fell to 88.5 billion dollars over the same period, decreasing the five-month foreign trade deficit by 15.2 percent to 27 billion dollars.

As compared with the same month of the previous year, exports to the EU-28 fell by 21.3 percent from 6.0 billion dollars to 4.72 billion dollars. The share of the EU countries fell to 42.5 percent in May 2015, down from 43.8 percent in May 2014.

In May 2015, the main partner country for exports was Germany with 1.02 billion dollars, followed by The United Kingdom by 689 million dollars, Iraq by 658 million dollars and Italy by 507 million dollars.

Turkey’s highest imports came from China with 1.94 billion dollars, followed by Germany with 1.85 billion dollars, Russia with 1.79 billion dollars and USA with 1.06 billion dollars.

The ratio of high-technology products in manufacturing industries was 3.5 percent. The ratio of medium-high-technology products in manufacturing industries was 31.5 percent.

The ratio of high-technology products in manufacturing industries’ products was 15.7 percent in May 2015. The ratio of medium-high-technology products in manufacturing industries’ products was 44.7 percent.