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by collecting some 100 kilograms of waste from the streets. Now, they can only make TRY30-TRY35 because there is so much plastic waste in the country. Turkey is becoming Europe’s dumping ground,” says Recep Kahraman, the head of the garbage pickers’ association. Importing waste has become a very profitable business for local companies, according to Kahraman. “The imported paper and plastic also contain toxic waste that is why their prices are cheaper,” he added. The government this year banned the provison of free plastic bags in supermarkets. They now charge shoppers TRY0.25 per bag. Environmentalists welcomed the decision as it discourages people from using too many plastic bags. However, allowing a large amount of possibly toxic plastic waste into the country makes the move against plastic bag use rather meaningless and ineffective.
In July, local jewellery shipments soared 96.2% on an annual basis. In the first seven months of the year, the shipments rose by some 13% y/y to stand at $2.2bn.
Turkey’s Ministry of Trade inspected a total of 1.2bn imported items between January and July this year and refused to allow some 2.5mn of the items to enter the country on the grounds that they might pose risks to health and property. Inspections particularly focused on consumer goods such as toys, home appliances and cellular phones as well as medical equipment, according to state-owned news service Anadolu. Following the inspections, 360,000 items of medical equipment, 390,000 toys, 593,000 chargers, 375,000 units of lighting equipment, 53,000 automobile headlights and 974 tonnes of construction steel were not allowed to enter the domestic market. The report did not say which countries the banned goods originated from.
5.2.2 Current account dynamics
“Since the height of the Lira and Peso sell-off in August 2018, both currencies have weakened sharply in real effective terms, with the scale of depreciation in line with historical “sudden stops.” While both have seen their current account deficits narrow sharply, this is mostly due to cyclical weakness and not genuine rebalancing,” the IIF said on July 15 in a research note.
First annual current account surplus since 2002 for Turkey but size of monthly deficit a surprise. Fall in imports after currency crisis rather than export strength eliminated gap. Repeated credit expansions now undoing progress.
Turkey’s 12-month rolling cumulative current account balance was not in deficit in June for the first time since November 2002, with a surplus of $538mn posted, the country’s central bank announced. However, the data for the
35 TURKEY Country Report September 2019 www.intellinews.com