ISTANBUL, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's anti-COVID-19 vaccination drive has gained pace with life expected to return to normal soon, providing relief for its ailing economy impacted by months of restrictions.
The mass inoculation program launched in mid-January gained significant momentum in the last two weeks, with more than 1 million people receiving jabs every day. To date, over 45.5 million doses have been administered, the Turkish Health Ministry said Friday.
There is still a way to be made towards the goal of immunizing at least 60 percent of the population of 83 million with two doses of vaccines, but hopes are high to meet the target as the eligibility age has been lowered to 18.
"With the vaccine, we are at the brink of getting rid of the pandemic," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.
All coronavirus restrictions will be lifted on Thursday, including night and Sunday curfews, and all businesses, factories, and other industrial production facilities will return to full normalcy.
Despite severe losses incurred during the lockdowns, which lasted until the end of May, the business community chooses to stay optimistic.
"It has been very hard. We managed to stay afloat with government support and credits," Serhat Ustun, manager of a medium-sized furniture company, told Xinhua. "Now, we want to work at full speed to try to make up for the time and money lost."
The firm's workshop, located in the Siteler neighborhood, a furniture manufacturers hub in the capital Ankara, employs nearly 20 workers who have all returned to their stations and all got vaccinated.
"There is no use looking behind," Ustun said. "We have to work and produce to get the economy machine going as it was before the pandemic."
The global health crisis hit Turkey when it was still reeling from a 2018 currency meltdown and a recession, pushing inflation and unemployment to double-digit figures and further weakening the lira.
Turkey also suffers from a drastic decline in foreign direct investment. "We can say that investments have stopped completely as of 2021," the local press quoted Abdurrahman Kaan, chairperson of Independent Industrialists and Businessmen's Association as saying on Wednesday.
Yet, Turkey's economy expanded 1.8 percent in 2020, surfing on a wave of credits from state-lenders.
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 7 percent in the first quarter of this year, and the Ankara government counts on the return to normal life for the economy to expand more than 5 percent this year.
"Vaccination is expanding, and when this epidemic breaks its effect, economic activity will be at better levels," Enver Erkan, chief economist of Istanbul-based Tera Securities, said on a note to investors.
He noted that the growth performance in the last two quarters is decisive, and upside and down risks still seem balanced.
Meanwhile, the vital tourism industry, accounting for 12 percent of the GDP, got a boost with the acceleration of the inoculation program.
Germany, France, and Russia have removed Turkey from their high-risk lists amid a significant drop in daily coronavirus cases, currently hovering between 5,000 and 6,000, but tourism professionals still expressed caution for this season.
"Russians are crucial for tourism in Turkey's southern coasts, so their arrival is a good sign," Erkan Tasci, a tour operator from Ankara, told Xinhua.
He said that the industry hopes that Britain, Turkey's third-largest tourism market, will also remove the country from its red list.
In 2019, the industry brought in 34.5 billion U.S. dollars and more than 45 million visitors. Last year, however, visitors dropped by 70 percent, and revenues fell to about 12 billion dollars, according to the Culture and Tourism Ministry. Enditem
