The Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) announced the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data covering the July-September period. In line with these data, the Turkish economy grew by 6.7 percent in the third quarter. Our President Abdurrahman Kaan made a written statement on the matter.
In his statement, President Kaan made the following remarks:
"The global economy, which before the Covid-19 pandemic was expected to grow by 3.5 percent throughout 2020, is estimated according to current forecasts to contract in the band of 4.5 - 5.0 percent in this period. Indeed, the leading countries of the global system, which paid the economic price of the pandemic heavily in the second quarter of the year, continued their contraction in the third quarter of the year as well.
For instance, in this period the economy of the United Kingdom contracted by 9.6 percent, the Japanese economy by 5.8 percent, the Euro Area by 4.4 percent, the German economy by 4.0 percent and the US economy by 2.9 percent, and when the Chinese economy, which grew by 4.9 percent, is left aside, the negative course of all G20 countries drew attention.
When evaluated in this context, the fact that the Turkish economy grew by 6.7 percent in the third quarter of the year indicates that we have decoupled positively not only among developing countries but even from the economic performance of developed countries. Thus, the country that displayed the most successful growth performance among the G20 countries in the third quarter of the year has been Türkiye.
In this period, alongside domestic consumption, which expanded by 9.2 percent and made a serious contribution to growth, the fact that investments, which recorded an increase of 22.5 percent, also turned strongly positive again after an interval of two quarters has been among the primary factors determining the pace of the recovery process in the Turkish economy. We believe that exports of goods and services, which decreased by 22.4 percent due to the contractionary effect of foreign trade, which was quite negatively affected by the pandemic process, will turn positive as of the last quarter of the year.
Despite the leap we have made in recent years, particularly in the services sector, the manufacturing industry maintains its importance for the Turkish economy. Within the industrial sector, which expanded by 8 percent in the third quarter of the year, the scale of our country's existing production in the manufacturing industry, which expanded by 9.3 percent, will be a competitive advantage for the post-Covid-19 period. In this period, the fact that the services, agriculture and construction sectors sustained their growth alongside the industrial sector is gratifying in that it indicates that the 6.7-point growth has spread to the base.
Thus, the Turkish economy, which grew by an average of 0.4 percent in the first three quarters of the year, has come one step closer to the 0.3-point year-end growth target set within the scope of the New Economy Program. The fact that the Turkish economy, for which international institutions had forecast a serious contraction with the pandemic process, has entered a positive growth path again means serious motivation for the real sector, particularly for 2021 and the period thereafter.
In this context, as MÜSİAD, in this coming process that we may describe as the new period, we believe that with monetary and fiscal policies compatible with one another the economy will enter a strong growth period once again, and that by going beyond the effort we have shown in the production-trade-investment triangle we will attain the international competitive power that will ensure economic growth continues in a sustainable manner."