GROWTH IS SLOWING DOWN
Seyfettin Gürsel, Mine Durmaz and Melike Kökkızıl
February statistics and partially March statistics point out opposite changes as in January. We observe that the increase in industrial production slows down while the revival in consumption is becoming apparent. Both productions of investment goods and passenger cars, as well as real sector confidence index all have declined whereas imports of investment goods significantly increased. We expect that the contribution of net exports to the growth will be limited and negative. Our estimates for quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth rates are, respectively, 0.4 percent and 3 percent. In addition, we predict the current account deficit to GDP ratio to be 4.3 percent and the gold-excluded ratio to be 3.9 percent.