Turkish economy to grow 5-6 pct in 2017: Deputy PM

By Aysenur Saglam and Mehtap Yilmaz

ANKARA (AA) - Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Monday that the country’s economic growth rate for this year will be between 5 to 6 percent.

In a live interview broadcast jointly by private television channels BloombergHT and Haberturk, Simsek said Turkey’s economy had shown a steady growth despite domestic and international shocks.

"The Turkish economy grew by 5.7 percent on average between 2002-2016 despite a number of massive shocks such as, the global crisis, the fall in domestic demand due to debt crisis in Europe, the chaos in the Middle East, terrorism, and the coup attempt," Simsek said.

He said that Turkey's growth rate slowed down in recent years but it recovered rapidly, owing to the right decisions taken by the government.

"Investments started to recover and foreign demand is strong," Simsek said, adding that employment generated doubled compared to the average in the past years.

He said for the short term, Turkey had to apply a tight monetary policy in order to drop the inflation rate and limit loss in the Turkish lira.

He added that structural reforms were the only way to overcome issues, such as reducing the current account deficit, and financing growth and investment with domestic sources in medium term.

"Our purpose is to reduce the foreign dependency rate," Simsek said.

He said that once the reforms become successful external fragility would reduce, and economic growth will become inclusive and sustainable.

Simsek added that two important developing countries -- Russia and Brazil -- were unable to grow although they had not encountered even one-third of the problems Turkey had.

"They [Russia and Brazil] do not have Turkey's dynamism. There is a great spirit of entrepreneurship and financial space in Turkey. We will enhance it with reforms.”