Abstract

The level of import dependency is an important issue for Turkish manufacturing. The aim of our paper is to examine the degree of import dependency at the firm and sectoral levels for Trakya region. In order to calculate import dependency of manufacturing firms, we use firm-level data provided by Turkish Statistical Institute covering the period of 2003-2017. The contribution of our paper arises from the fact that we use firm-level data unlike the other papers in the related literature and it allows us to examine import dependency at the firm-level. We show that although import dependency in Trakya Region was 27,6% in 2003, it decreased steadily over the 15 years and it levelled with the country average, 16%, in 2015. This decrease can be explained by the decrease in import dependency in some important sub-sectors in the region, such as “Manufacture of textiles”, “Manufacture of electrical equipment” and “Manufacture of wearing apparel”.