Regional turmoil costs Turkey $384 million in trade losses

Turkey’s trade with countries in the Middle East and North Africa – a region that offered Turkish business new markets during the recent economic crisis – has been deeply affected by political uprisings and unrest, figures have shown.

The country’s exports to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Syria slumped nearly $384 million by the end of the first quarter of 2011 compared with the same period last year.

The biggest decrease has been in exports to Libya, which dropped 43 percent, followed by Egypt and Yemen with a 24 percent drop and Tunisia at 20 percent. The unrest in Syria over the last three weeks caused nearly a 5 percent decrease in Turkish exports in the first quarter of the year according to figures provided by the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly, or TİM.

"We never expected these events to take place and spread to all the countries one by one," an executive of the Aegean Exporters Union said in a phone interview last week, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We will need to wait at least for one more month to see the temporary and permanent results of the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa."

Most Turkish exporters were not prepared for such instabilities in the region, he said.

"The figures are basically the result of the ongoing tension in the region," Rona Yırcalı, the board chairman of the Foreign Economic Relations Board, or DEİK, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review earlier this month. "I believe the export figures will change in the second and third quarter of this year in a positive way," said Yırcalı, noting that Egypt and Tunisia had already started to show recovery signs.

"Things have just started in Syria and it will take some more time for Libya to settle down," the DEİK board chairman said.

"I believe that the decrease in export figures will not continue in the long run," Tarık Bozbey, the head of the Mediterranean Exporters Union, told the Daily News. He said the needs of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria would be high after the current unrest subsides, creating a demand for more exports.

"If you stayed at home and did not shop for a few weeks, you would most likely [be able] to purchase at least four times more than the usual amount," he said.

Exports to Libya decreased from nearly $146.6 million in January to $23.5 million by the end of March due to the rising unrest in the North African country as Turkey’s total export volume slumped from $457.2 million in the first quarter last year to $272.8 million by the end of the first quarter this year.

Turkish exports to Egypt also plummeted, decreasing from nearly $618.8 million to $487.5 million. The total amount of exports to Tunisia sharply decreased to $145.1 in the first quarter of this year, down from $184.2 million in the same period last year.

Total Turkish export volume to Syria – the latest Middle Eastern country hit by an uprising – decreased nearly 5 percent in first quarter of 2011. The Syrian economy has not been greatly affected by the popular protests, which have spread to the country in the past two weeks, and the Central Bank has enough liquidity to cover imports or withdrawals without any problem, Syrian Central Bank Gov. Adib Mayeleh said Monday, according to Bloomberg.

Despite the encouraging messages from Syrian authorities, Turkish exports to Syria have also decreased from nearly $419.1 million to around $411.4 million since the same period last year.


/Hurriyet Daily News/