Falling oil prices help energy-dependent Turkey balance its foreign trade deficit. According to the provisional data produced in cooperation with the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) and the Ministry of Customs and Trade in October 2014, exports amounted to $12.93 billion – a 7.3 percent increase compared to October 2013, while imports were $19.18 billion – a 1.5 percent decrease at the same period. In the same month the foreign trade deficit decreased by 15.8 percent from $7.42 billion to $6.25 billion. In October 2014the exports coverage of imports was 67.4 percent up considerably from the 61.9 percent coverage rate of October 2013.As compared with the same month of the previous year, exports to the European Union increased by 8.1 percent from $5.28 billion to $5.71 billion. The proportion of EU countries was 44.2 percent in October 2014, a slight increase on the 43.8 percent for October 2013. In October 2014, the main partner country for exports was Germany with $1.28 billion worth of purchases. Germany was followed by the United Kingdom ($860 million), Iraq ($857 million) and Italy ($566 million).In October 2014 the top country for Turkey's imports was China ($2.79 billion) with records being registered for imports coming from Germany ($1.8 billion), Russia ($1.73 billion) and Italy ($997 million).