Impact of Earthquake on GDP Growth in the First Quarter
Ozan Bakış and Hamza Mutluay
In light of the fully-released January, February, and partly-released March leading indicators, we expect GDP to increase by 1.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2023. According to seasonal and calendar-adjusted data, we forecast quarter-on-quarter GDP growth to be 0.9 percent.
In the previous month, our GDP forecast did not account for the impact of the earthquakes in the southern region of Turkey on February 6th, 2023. Although we had access to some leading indicators from January and February, we had yet to fully receive all the necessary in- formation to adjust our forecast. As a result, we predicted a YoY and QoQ GDP increase of 5 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively. However, we now have the fully-released data from January, February, and partly- released March leading indicators, demonstrating the earthquake’s effects. We are observing a decline in production-related indicators, such as the industrial production index, electricity consumption, and capacity utilization rate.