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The expected low economic growth combined with the dim world economy prospect are main concerns for Turkey in 2015, experts said on Saturday.
The Turkish government projects four percent growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015 while trying to keep the inflation rate at 6.3 percent by the end of 2015.
Economists said in a recently published survey that there is a slight decrease in Turkey's economic growth estimation in 2015. They expected the growth rate to range from 3 to 4 percent.
According to the head of Istanbul Association for Economic Studies Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin, this rate wouldn't be sufficient to support Turkey's economy.
Turkish Statistical Institute has recently announced Turkey's GDP growth in the third quarter of 2014 as 1.7 percent which is far too low than the expectations. The analysts described the figure as the worst case scenario.
Bilgin pointed out that Turkey's economy is very sensitive to global trends, particularly the slow improvement in Eurozone economy and low growth rate of the developing countries' economies. They all have direct impact on the domestic economy, he remarked.
Due to the grim economic prospect, unemployment will be the most important challenge to Turkey, which reached a new high since 2011 with 10.5 percent in September this year. The figure in August was 10.1 percent.
The number of the unemployed people over the age of 15 reached 3.06 million compared to 2.94 million in the previous period.
Moreover, the political turbulences in the environments that surround Turkey have a crashing effect on the economy, Bilgin said.
"The political instability and crisis in Ukraine and Russia and the war in Syria and Iraq are separate factors that are responsible for the high unemployment rate in the country," he added.
However, one significant foreign factor that will contribute to the development of Turkey's economy will be the low oil price, experts agreed. As Turkey is energy dependent, the low prices are definitely for the benefit of the country, Bilgin stated.
"No one should underestimate the effect of cheap oil prices on Turkey's economy," he said, adding "As a result of the low prices, Turkey's high current account deficit will be diminished significantly in 2015."
Turkey's current account deficit has been announced at the beginning of December at 45.72 billion dollars. This is the lowest since December 2010.
The participants of the survey also expressed their contentment from Turkey's central bank interventions and policies. In 2015 as a result of the bank's intervention economists do not expect any significant fluctuations in the exchange rate.
The dollar rate is expected to range from 2.25 to 2.5 Turkish lira and the euro rate from 2.5 to 3 Turkish lira.
Meanwhile, the Turkish parliament has approved the government's central administration budget for 2015.
The Finance Ministry's estimated budget expenses for the 2015 fiscal year is 225 billion dollars. The biggest share will be given to education and health with 38 billion dollars each. Enditem
