Goverment expecs nearly $150 bln in export revenue in 2012

Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan has announced that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government's export target this year is to earn $149 billion in revenue from goods sold to overseas markets. Speaking to the Anatolia news agency, the minister made comparisons between Turkey and other economies, particularly those in Europe, with respect to a number of key indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) growth, the unemployment rate, the budget deficit and the ratio of public debt to GDP, concluding that 2011 was an excellent year for the country. In the field of exports, he noted that the government is optimistic about meeting the 2023 republic centennial's target of $500 billion. To that end, he noted that this year's target has been set at just below $150 billion. "Thanks to the strategies we will follow, we expect our volume of exports to top $149 billion and our imports to be at $248 billion by the end of this year," he said. Turkey's main exports are motor vehicles, petrochemicals and textile products. It has a trade relationship with almost all nations around the world, but the country's largest trading partner and export market is the European Union, with which it has a customs union. The 27-member bloc accounts for nearly 45 percent of all of Turkey's trade overseas, down from over 50 percent a decade ago. The volume of exports in 2011 will be announced by the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) on Monday, but it will take another two months before the assembly's annual import figures will be announced by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat). According to the most recent data available, Turkey's foreign trade deficit -- the main reason for its wide current account deficit (CAD) -- dropped by nearly 3 percent to $7.53 billion in November of last year from $7.75 billion in the same month of 2010. The same year-on-year evaluation by TurkStat indicated that the country's exports expanded by 18.5 percent while its imports grew by only 8.8 percent in November. This is mainly due to the weakening of the lira against the US dollar for most of that particular month. With the decline in the country's foreign trade deficit expected to continue, it is also likely its CAD will shrink as well. Turkey's CAD dropped to $4.2 billion in October of last year, nearly 35 percent lower than what it had been a month earlier.