Turkish finance minister optimistic for 2017

By Fatih Erkan Dogan

ANKARA (AA) - Leading economic indicators suggest 2017 will be a much better year for the Turkish economy, Finance Minister Naci Agbal said on Tuesday.

Speaking on a private TV channel, Agbal said Turkey managed to expand at a rate of 2.9 percent in 2016 despite challenges such as the July coup bid, terror attacks, difficulties in tourism and the negative global economic backdrop.

Turkey's economy expanded at the rate of 2.9 percent in 2016, the Turkish Statistical Institute announced last Friday.

A sharp recovery in domestic consumption in the last quarter (2016) as well as a solid rebound in industrial production last month “is very promising for 2017”, the minister said.

“This data show 2017 will be a much better year than 2016,” Agbal added.

Turkey's fourth-quarter GDP reading was substantially higher than the experts’ median estimates, coming in at 3.5 percent compared with the 2.4 percent survey prediction from Anadolu Agency’s Finance Desk.

Turkey’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector also was announced as 52.3 points in March, one of the largest month-on month increases in the headline figure in the 12-year history of the survey, according to a report from IHS Markit on Monday.

Regarding efforts by the Turkish government to support economic activity in the face of recent challenges, Agbal said they planned to use fiscal policy to help medium-term economic outlook to turn positive but those measures would be completely within the scope of “tight fiscal discipline”.

“The measures we will take will be goal-oriented, aimed at investments, production, employment and exports.

“The increase in expenditures or tax cuts will be temporary. We will not make any concessions over fiscal discipline,” he said.