Turkey reported a 4.2 per cent drop in gross national product (GNP) today in the first three months of 2001 from a year earlier, as the effects of two major financial crises bite into the economy.
The figures released by the State Statistics Institute on its website indicate 4.2 per cent GNP growth in the first quarter of 2000.
Turkey's economy has been rocked by two successive crises in November and late February. The second forced a flotation of the lira currency that destroyed an IMF-backed dis-inflation plan.
Since then thousands have been laid off work as Turks struggle to deal with a more than 40-percent depreciation of the lira against the dollar.
Under a new IMF loan deal that offers $15.7 billion this year in crisis lending, Turkey has budgeted for a three percent contraction in GNP for the whole of 2001, hoping that the cheaper lira will allow export-fuelled growth to return in the second half of the year. Many analysts predict a more severe contraction.