According to the provisional foreign trade statistics compiled by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) and the Turkish Undersecretariat of Customs, in March this year Turkey's foreign trade deficit increased by 181.6 percent to $5.4 billion compared to March 2019. In the first quarter of the current year, Turkey's foreign trade deficit rose by 117.3 percent year on year to $12.9 billion.
In March, Turkey's iron and steel exports ranked fourth among the country's products with the highest export value, totaling $673.93 million, falling by 31.7 percent year on year. Meanwhile, in the given month the value of exports of articles of iron or steel, which ranked seventh among the products with the highest export value, decreased by 8.1 percent year on year, amounting to $533.35 million.
In the first three months of the year, Turkey's iron and steel export value was down by 22.2 percent to $2.17 billion, while the value of its exports of articles of iron or steel decreased by 0.1 percent to $1.6 billion, both year on year.