Namık Kemal PARLAK Editor

As you know, from time to time, I’m trying to share with you statistics about Turkey, which is a major player of the world’s grain and flour market, from this column. In this last editorial of 2019, I want to give information on Turkey’s food and agriculture sectors.

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data, Turkey’s exports in the food and agricultural sectors in the first 10 months of the year totaled $14.37 billion, up one percent compared to the same period of the last year. Imports, however, decreased by 5.97 percent to $10.4 billion.

The data points to a significant increase in Turkey’s wheat imports. Grains took the first place in imports with $2.56 billion. Animal feed imports ranked second with $2.13 billion and the flour sector ranked third with $1.07 billion.

In the first 10 months of 2019, three most exported products were respectively hazelnut ($960 million), flour ($870 million) and pasta ($ 500 million). The most imported products were wheat with $1.51 billion while soybean followed with $837 million and corn with $609 million. The most remarkable increase in the 10-month imports of grain sector was in durum wheat with 170.7 percent. During this period, 901 thousand tons of durum wheat were imported for 250 million dollars.

When we review the 10-month export and import figures for pasta, we see a very significant figure. The average selling price of the sector, which exported 1.06 million tons of pasta and brought $505 million of foreign currency to the country, went down to as low as 476 dollars per ton. According to the TurkStat data, there is a small amount of pasta imports. Turkey paid $6.8 million in return for 3,654 tons of pasta. That is, Turkey paid 1,866 dollars for a ton of pasta it imported.

In the first 10 months of 2019, Iraq ($2 billion), Germany ($1.1 billion) and Italy ($700 million) were the countries to which Turkey exported the most in food and agricultural products. Russia ($2 billion), Ukraine ($1.1 billion) and Brazil ($900 million) were the countries from which the largest imports were made.