Turkey's economy to grow by 8 % in 2011

Turkey's Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said recent figures showed that Turkey's economic growth in 2011 is expected to be around 8 percent, the country's semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported Monday. Speaking at a press conference held in the Finance Ministry on Monday, Mehmet Simsek said that Turkey showed a great performance in 2011 in regard to growth, employment and budget. In 2010, Turkey's economy grew by 9 percent, said Simsek. However, Eurozone debt crisis negatively affected the world economy in the second half of 2011, despite a good economic performance in the first half. Unemployment rate in Turkey dropped 2.1 percentage points year on year to 9.1 percent on average during the September to November period in 2011, the country's statistics authority TurkStat said earlier on Monday. As for the October to November period, the total number of jobless people in Turkey decreased to 2.45 million in 2011 from 2. 9 million over the same period a year earlier, TurkStat said. Meanwhile, youth unemployment declined to 17.4 percent in the Octorber to November period in 2011 from 21.3 percent a year earlier, according to TurkStat. In 2011, Turkey's central administration budget deficit dropped by 56.5 percent to 17.43 billion Turkish liras (about 9.39 billion U.S. dollars) against a deficit of 40.08 billion Turkish liras (21. 60 billion dollars) in 2010, Simsek said at the press conference. Further, he forecasted that world economic growth in 2011 would probably be lower than 4 percent or even close to 3 percent in contrast with the 5.1 percent growth in 2010.