Turkey is bracing for the first ramifications of the coronavirus outbreak on exports, which are expected to have dropped around 17% in March, led by a decline in trade with major trade partners, the country’s trade minister said.

"We started the year well. Our January-February exports increased by 4%. Closure of the (border) gates and the situation in Europe have affected us," Trade Minister Ruhsar Pekcan told broadcaster NTV on Wednesday.

Exports to Iran declined by 82%, to Iraq by 48%, to Spain and Italy by 40%, France by 32.5% and to Germany by 14%, Pekcan noted, adding that sales to China and the U.K. also dropped by 19% and 12%, respectively.

She said the country would see some decline in exports in March, pointing to a possible decline of around 17%. Data for March is expected to be announced on Thursday. In the January-February period, the country’s exports totaled $29.4 billion, rising 4.3% on a yearly basis. Imports also posted an annual rise of 14.4% to $36.9 billion, according to the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM) data.

"God willing we will recover with contactless trade in a short time frame," Pekcan noted.

As of the beginning of March, the country shut its border gates with neighboring countries, including Iran and Iraq, to stem the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. After the closure of Iraqi borders, the Trade Ministry focused on noncontact foreign trade studies to continue the country's exports and imports.

Currently, Turkish drivers bring trucks to border crossings, and foreign drivers then receive the trucks to transport the containers abroad. The vehicles are disinfected when they arrive at the buffer zone established at the customs gates before drivers take them over.

The minister stated that the contactless trade enabled the country to recover some of the losses in trade with Iraq. Pekcan indicated that since the country doesn’t have a buffer zone with Iran, they found another way to continue trade, through railways.

"Our locomotives push the freight cars into Iran. When they cross the Iranian border, another locomotive in the Iranian territory starts pulling them," she said, adding that they are capable of doubling the current capacity. "We can increase the number of freight cars from 80 to 150."

Pekcan also stressed the importance of railways, calling on manufacturers and exporters to use railway transport. She noted the country could increase the capacity of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars line, a railway line connecting the eastern province of Kars to the Georgian and Azerbaijani capitals, Tbilisi and Baku.

The minister on Friday said around 2,500 tons of goods are being carried through the line daily and that the capacity could be increased to 6,000 tons if there is a demand.

In a bid to continue the flow of goods between Turkey and the Central Asian countries, Turkey increased the capacity of the border crossings to Azerbaijan and Georgia, she said.

Pekcan also noted that drivers use a similar method along the European borders. Over 1,100 trucks cross Turkey’s borders with Greece and Bulgaria through a scheme of driver exchanges. Some 35,800 freight cars enter Bulgaria through the Kapıkule station annually. The daily train service on the railway between the district of Çerkezköy in the northwestern Tekirdağ province toward Bulgaria has doubled to twice a day.

Additionally, ferry boats also continue carrying 170,000 trailers to Italy’s Trieste and Bari ports, and 50,000 to France’s Toulon and Sete ports annually from Turkey’s ports in Istanbul, the Aegean province of İzmir and the Mediterranean province of Mersin. However, no drivers are allowed to go onboard.

Pekcan also recalled a statement made by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during an extraordinary G-20 summit on the virus last week when he said no country has the luxury of implementing protectionist, unilateral policies.

Erdoğan was cited as saying that measures to tackle the coronavirus should be compatible with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and encourage global cooperation.

"Protectionist policies should be given up. We have always declared that we side with fair and free trade," Pekcan said.