Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Turkey’s trade deficit narrowed in February as gold exports eased the impact of a drop in sales abroad and imports sank for the sixth month in a row.

Turkey’s trade gap shrank to $4.66 billion last month from $5.2 billion a year ago, Turkey state statistics institute said in a report on its website Tuesday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 10 economists was $4.3 billion gap.

Sales of precious metals including gold rose 70 percent from last year to $1.9 billion, limiting the drop in exports to 6 percent while imports dropped 7.2 percent to $16.9 billion, the Turkstat report showed.

The European Union remains the largest destination for Turkish exports, which fell in dollar value during the first two months of this year as the euro depreciated against the greenback. Imports declined for 12 out of 13 months that followed an emergency interest rate increase in January 2014 which slowed domestic demand.

The lira was little changed after the trade data and was trading 0.1 percent lower at 2.6096 per dollar at 10:08 a.m. in Istanbul.