Turkey's current account to post surplus in Aug: survey

By Erhan Cihan Unal

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's current account balance is expected to show a surplus of $2.46 billion in August, according to an Anadolu Agency survey on Tuesday.

The CBRT, Turkish Central Bank, will release the country's balance of payments figures for August on Thursday, Oct. 11.

A group of 14 economists' current account surplus estimates vary between $1.88 billion and $2.80 billion.

Turkey's current account deficit in July dropped 62.8 percent year-on-year to $1.75 billion, down from $4.7 billion in the same month last year.

The economists surveyed by Anadolu Agency also predicted that Turkey's year-end current account deficit would be $40.1 billion on average -- varying between $37 billion and $45 billion.

Turkey's annual current account deficit in 2017 was around $47.5 billion -- around 5.6 percent of the country's GDP.

The country's new economic program, announced last month, is targeting a current-account-deficit-to-GDP ratio of 4.7 percent this year, 3.3 percent next year, 2.7 percent in 2020, and 2.6 percent in 2021.

* Muhammed Ali Gurtas from Ankara contributed to this report.