According to the provisional foreign trade statistics compiled by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) and the Turkish Undersecretariat of Customs, in December last year Turkey's iron and steel imports totaled $1.5 billion, decreasing by 13.4 percent year on year and down 2.8 percent compared to November 2012. Iron and steel ranked fourth among the most imported products of the country in the given month.
Meanwhile, in December Turkey's imports of articles of iron or steel, which ranked 15th among the products with the highest import value, rose by 9.5 percent compared to December 2011 and were down 11 percent month on month, amounting to $225.5 million.
In the whole of 2012, the country's iron and steel imports stood at $19.6 billion, decreasing by 3.8 percent compared to 2011, while its imports of articles of iron or steel amounted to $2.4 billion, down by 6.1 percent year on year.