Economic Growth and Forecasts: April 2018

The first quarter growth is above 7 percent

Ozan Bakış and Yazgı Genç

In the light of fully-released January, February and partly released March leading indicators, our estimate for the year-on-year GDP growth is 7.2 percent in the first quarter of 2018. Our former estimate was 7.5 percent. This reason for this small revision is that the rise in updated private consumption and investment indicators fell behind our expectations. Nevertheless, we expect that private consumption and investment will give a boost to economic growth. Striking increase in public investment continues. We do not change our quarter on quarter forecast based on seasonally
and calendar day adjusted data. Accordingly, quarter-on-quarter growth rate is expected to be 1.4 percent in the first quarter of 2018 compared to previous quarter.

pdf. EconomicGrowthForecasts2018M04