Turkey's environmental spendings stand at $10.5 billion

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA

Turkey's environmental expenditures reached 31.8 billion Turkish liras ($10.5 billion) in 2016, country's statistics authority said Tuesday.

Data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) showed public sector accounted for 76.1 percent of total environmental spendings in 2016.

Environmental expenditure's share on the country's gross domestic product stood at 1.2 percent.

"Total of environmental taxes accrued as 88.7 billion liras ($29.4 billion) in 2016," TurkStat said.

"In total environmental taxes, energy taxes accounted for 65.3 percent, followed by transport taxes as 33.5 percent, and resource and pollution taxes as 1.2 percent in 2016," it said.

TurkStat added that Turkey’s overall greenhouse gas emissions reached 496 million tons during the same period.

"The energy sector accounted for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions at 72.8 percent," it said.

Emissions per capita were calculated as 6.3 tons for 2016.