Abstract:

Plastic materials play an important role in the production of many industrial and consumer products today. In developing countries such as Turkey, factors such as industrial growth and population growth increase the demand for plastics. In order to meet this demand, countries such as Turkey mostly supply plastic materials through imports. Therefore, it is important to estimate the import value of the plastics industry, which has a very important economic potential for Turkey. This study aims to predict the future import value of Turkey's plastics industry by using artificial neural networks (ANN). The data used in the study were obtained from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) and the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT). The data set includes monthly data (267 months) between 2000 and 2023. The dependent variable of the model is Turkey's monthly plastic import value. The model has 6 independent variables. These; monthly average US Dollar Rate, monthly Turkey export, monthly Turkey import, plastic producer price index (PPI), monthly European oil barrel price and monthly plastic export value. The results of the study show that Turkey's monthly plastic import will be between 1.25 and 1.45 billion USD between April and December 2023. In addition, this study highlights the potential of ANN models in estimating plastic imports in Turkey. Future work may aim to further improve forecasting performance by incorporating more comprehensive datasets, more complex neural network architectures, and the effects of different economic variables.

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