Turkey's cultural expenses rise in 2018: Official data

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's cultural expenditures rose by 23.4% to reach 54.38 billion Turkish liras ($11.28 billion) in 2018, according to official figures released on Tuesday.

The ratio of cultural expenses in the country's GDP was 1.5% last year, up from 1.4% in 2018, Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.

"The 64.3% of the expenditures were the general government cultural expenditures and 35.7% were the private cultural expenditures," the institute noted.

It added that general government's cultural expenditures increased by 23.4% in the year to 34.95 billion Turkish liras ($7.25 billion), versus 2017.

In the same period, households' cultural spendings also saw a rise of 23.9% to reach 18.96 billion Turkish liras ($3.93 billion).

Over quarter of households' cultural expenses were made for television and TV broadcasting, with books/newspapers (16.5%) and data processing equipment (13.3%) following it.

"In 2018, the turnover value of the enterprises' total cultural goods and services increased by 11.3% compared to 2017 and reached 38.99 billion Turkish liras ($8.08 billion)," TurkStat said.

Turkey's cultural goods exports were 34.1 billion Turkish liras ($7.07 billion) in 2018, while its imports were 22.7 billion Turkish liras ($4.7 billion).

The average U.S. dollar/Turkish lira rate was 4.82 in 2018.