| Turkey's current account deficit surged 113.82 percent in the first four months of 2011 over the same period a year earlier to reach $29.64 billion. Expectations for year-end deficit stand at $66,5 billion, a monthly survey of the Turkish Central Bank has estimated on Thursday.
Zafer Caglayan, who was named the new Economy Minister in the new Turkish government, said that growing current account deficit was a really important problem for Turkey.
"Current account deficit is the prime target for me. My goal is to beat it down," Caglayan said in his address to top officials of Turkey's revenue administration.
Caglayan explained how he would reduce c/a deficit, saying: "We have examined sectors that had the most deficit and we saw that Turkey could cut its imports up to $30 billion a year.
"For example, Turkey is the world's top iron & steel importing country. Last year's imports reached $9 billion, we are talking about nearly 20 percent of current account deficit here.
We have the iron ore, we have the capacity to process, yet there are only three companies making iron & steel in their integrated plants."
On Friday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the size of current account deficit was not a worry. He said it would start falling in the fourth quarter as the government had taken necessary measures.
Caglayan also said that the government was working on ways to lure more foreign investments and rise exports, which he said was likely to hit record high level by the end of the year in the light of recent figures, to overcome current account deficit problem.
The government aims to reach $135 billion exports in 2011. |
