Turkey's economy expanded 11% year-over-year in 2021, growing 9.1% in the fourth quarter of the year in line with market expectations, official data showed Monday.
"Gross domestic product (GDP) at current prices increased by 42.8% and reached TL 7.2 trillion (nearly $518 billion) in 2021 compared with the previous year," the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said in its latest report.
The growth is the strongest in the last 10 years.
The GDP per capita stood at TL 85,672 ($9,539) at current prices last year.
Service activities made the biggest contribution to the country's economy with a 21.1% rise, followed by 20.3% in other service activities and 20.2% in information and communication activities.
Financial and insurance activities, the agriculture sector and construction sector decreased by 9%, 2.2% and 0.9%, respectively.
A panel of 21 economists polled by Anadolu Agency (AA) on Wednesday expected that Turkey's GDP rose 11.1% in 2021.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, the Turkish economy grew 9.1% from the same period of the previous year, TurkStat said.
GDP at current prices increased 51.8% to reach TL 2.3 trillion in the last quarter of the year.
Economists' forecast for the fourth quarter was an 8.7% annual growth rate on average, with the lowest at 6.3% and the highest at 10.2%.
It revealed that the economy grew 1.5% quarter-over-quarter in October-December 2021.
Commenting on the annual figures, Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati said Turkey became the fastest growing economy among the G-20 countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union according to available data.
Turkey is committed to maintaining balanced and stable growth in the upcoming period using its economic model, Nebati said.
"Through focusing on investment, production and exports, we will achieve our target of value-added growth that provides high employment," the minister wrote on Twitter.
Turkey saw 7.5% growth in the third quarter after expanding 21.9% in the second quarter and 7.3% in the first quarter of 2021.
According to the country's medium-term economic program, announced last September, the government aimed for 9% growth for the year.
In 2020, the economy grew 1.8%.
Also commenting on the growth figures, Trade Minister Mehmet Muş on Twitter said: "exports continue to be the driving force of the growth. The Turkish economy grew by 11% in 2021, the strongest growth in the last 10 years. The contribution of net exports of goods and services to growth was 4.9 points."
Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) Chairperson Nail Olpak said that seeing the country's double-digit growth presents a pleasing and reassuring picture to the business world.
"We see that our business world has succeeded in turning the troubles into opportunities, despite what happened during the pandemic," he said.
In a written statement, Olpak said that not every country can grow in the same way in the new post-pandemic period, noting that the EU GDP could return to its pre-pandemic levels in the second half of 2022, but Germany, Spain and some other EU countries still could not reach these levels.
Stressing the importance of achieving double-digit growth with exports of $225 billion, Olpak underlined that net foreign demand made a high contribution, 4.9 points, to the total GDP growth and reached the highest figure in the last 20 years.
The government acted decisively by supporting employment during the pandemic and kept domestic demand alive, Olpak said, adding that consumption expenditures, which increased by 15.1%, constituted 8.9 points of GDP growth.
"As DEIK, we will continue to work with all our strength for a more qualified growth in Turkey and a balanced spread of growth to the base in the upcoming period. In order to maximize our country's share in global trade, we will continue to touch all over the world more and contribute more to its growth based on foreign demand," he said.