An Input-Output Analysis of Rising Imports in Turkey

The dramatic surge in imports of goods and services without a concomitant surge in exports in Turkey deserves a sound explanation. The studies on the issue addressed increasing import dependency of the manufacturing sector in Turkey. This paper has attempted to scrutinize the reasons behind this phenomenon by looking not only at the manufacturing sector as the past studies did, but also at the other sectors of the economy. Using 1998 and 2002 Input -Output Tables, import requirement ratios have been calculated for 12 aggregate sectors. The results demonstrate that the contribution of the "wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and household goods" sector to the increasing import dependency, hence to significantly rising imports, is greater than that of the manufacturing sector.