According to the provisional foreign trade statistics compiled by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) and the Turkish Undersecretariat of Customs, in April this year Turkey's iron and steel exports totaled $735.29 million in value, increasing by 17.1 percent year on year and down 7.61 percent over the previous month, while exports of articles of iron or steel rose by 12.7 percent compared to April 2009 and were down 6.4 percent month on month, amounting to a value of $405.19 million.
Meanwhile, in April Turkey's iron and steel imports totaled $1.36 billion, increasing by 70.5 percent year on year and down 1.53 percent over March, while imports of articles of iron or steel rose by 35.9 percent compared to March 2009 and were down 1.01 percent month on month, reaching $158.76 million.
Thus, in terms of value, in April Turkey was a net importer of iron and steel, and its net imports totaled $907.54 million, compared to net imports of $20.86 million in April 2009.
On the other hand, in the first four months of 2010, the country's iron and steel exports stood at $2.44 billion, while its iron and steel imports amounted to $4.74 billion, decreasing by 9.5 percent and up 54.1 percent respectively, both compared to the corresponding period of 2009.