IMF Staff Country Reports

This Selected Issues paper examines the external imbalance situation in Turkey. Turkey’s current account deficit is expected to remain elevated at about 5.5 to 6 percent of GDP through 2019. Reducing the deficit to a more sustainable level about 2.5 to 3 percent of GDP should be a key policy priority. Applying the Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal Model, the paper quantifies the impact of four different approaches in reducing the current account deficit. The analysis shows that policies that directly increase private or public savings can reduce the external imbalance without reducing private investment and that they have relatively modest negative growth implications.