Turkey 4Q 2006, GDP grew by 5.2%, significantly above market consensus (4.2%). GNP, on the other hand, grew by 4.6%. Also, growth figures of earlier quarters were revised sharply upwards to bring full year growth rates to 6.1% for GDP and 6% for GNP. Thus, Turkey's GDP reached USD400 billion mark. In seasonally adjusted terms, GDP grew by 0.8% over previous quarter, down slightly from 1% in 3Q 2006.

Main driver of 4Q growth was external demand, with net exports contributing 2.5 percentage points to overall GDP growth. In contrast, domestic demand was weak: private consumption grew by just 0.1% while growth in private investment expenditures was 5.6%. These meagre growth rates are results of both a strong base and lagged effects of monetary tightening.

Note that year-on-year growth rate of final domestic demand dropped to 1.4% from 5.3% in third quarter and contribution of final domestic demand to overall GDP growth is just 1.5 percentage points. Inventories, meanwhile, contributed 1.3 percentage points to growth -exactly the difference between our forecast and actual outcome.

On the production side, industry grew by 6.5%, presumably on the back of export strength while growth rates of trade and transportation remained subdued at 4% and1.5%, respectively. Surprisingly, agriculture grew by 9.7%.