The current account deficit reached its highest level in 1.5 years

The current account balance showed a deficit of 3.84 billion dollars in December. Thus, the highest monthly deficit in approximately 1.5 years was recorded in the current account balance. The expectation of economists participating in the Bloomberg survey was that the current account deficit would be $4.2 billion in December. The November current account deficit was revised from $2.68 billion to $2.82 billion. Throughout the year, a deficit of 14.88 billion dollars was observed in the balance of payments. In 2020, the current account deficit of the Turkish economy was 35.5 billion dollars. Excluding gold and energy, which is the core current account balance indicator, a surplus of $2.28 billion was seen in the current account balance in December. In December 2020, this figure was recorded as 700 million dollars. While net inflows from the services balance increased by 1.12 billion USDcompared to December 2020 and reached 1.71 billion USD, net income arising from the travel item under the services balance amounted to 1.31 billion USD, an increase of 689 million USDcompared to the same month of 2020.