ANKARA, March 8: Turkey has changed its method of calculating its gross domestic product, switching to the system used in the European Union which it is hoping to join, the country’s statistics office said on Saturday.

The change to the European System of Accounts (ESA95) has resulted in a steep “rise” in Turkey’s GDP as well as the income per head of population, Anatolia news agency quoted the institute’s head, Omer Demir, as saying.

For 2006, for example, the increase was 31.6 per cent, from 576 billion to 758 billion Turkish pounds.

Annual income per head in the same year is now put at about $7,500, up from $5,480.—AFP