Turkish economy registers 1.8 per-cent growth in pandemic year

Turkey's economy expanded 1.8% year-on-year in 2020 amid economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the country's statistical authority on Monday.

The country's gross domestic product (GDP) at current prices stood at 5.1 trillion Turkish liras (some $717.1 billion) last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.

A panel of 21 economists polled by Anadolu Agency on Friday had projected that the Turkish economy would grow 2.2% in 2020.

In the last quarter of 2020, the economy posted an annual growth rate of 5.9%, TurkStat data showed.

Turkey and China were the only countries that posted a positive growth rate among all G20 countries for which data are available, while the rest saw a shrinkage during the same period.

Economists' forecast for the last quarter of last year was 7% on average, with the lowest at 5% and the highest at 8.3%.

The economy registered a growth of 6.3% in the third quarter of last year after a contraction of 10.3% in the second quarter as the coronavirus' impact started to be felt in earnest. Turkey's GDP expanded 4.5% in the first quarter.

The US dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was around 7.00 on average in 2020.

Turkey's New Economic Program, announced last September, expected the Turkish economy to grow 0.3% last year.

In 2019, the country's growth rate was 0.9%.