Babacan satisfied with recovery signals in Turkish economy

Turkey's unemployment rates for the last three months of 2009 and this January were better than expected, Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy Ali Babacan said yesterday, adding that they expect annual unemployment for last year to be below the 14.8 percent stated in the mid-term economic program. Speaking at a ceremony marking Turkey 's private pension system reaching 2 million participants, Babacan said after sustaining relatively little damage from the global economic crisis compared to other countries, the Turkish economy is now giving strong recovery signals. "The most important indicator of this recovery can be seen in unemployment figures, which started to fall in the last quarter of 2009," Babacan said. Stressing that the government would continue to keep economic recovery measures in place, he said, "Orders received by the manufacturing sector, production and export figures are rising with the each passing month. The balance between the numbers of closed and opened businesses is changing in favor the latter." Babacan also praised the performance of Turkey 's individual pension system, saying that it enables people to have long-term savings. "Given the performances of such systems in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, the Turkish private pension system is among the three individual pension systems with positive returns, along with Germany and South Korea," Babacan said, adding that the Turkish system generated 9.5 percent and 12 percent nominal yields in the last two years, the highest figures among OECD member countries. Also addressing the ceremony, Mete Ugurlu, chairman of the Pension Monitoring Center (EGM), said by 2020, nearly 400,000 people will be entitled to receive retirement pensions from the system.