The Turkish flag, left, and a flag bearing a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, hang on the exterior of a building in the Sisli district of Istanbul, Turkey, Monday, Aug. 29, 2022.
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Turkey’s inflation rate accelerated to 69.8% year-on-year in April, the Turkish Statistical Institute said on Friday.
The highest year-on-year increase in consumer prices was in the education sector, at 103.86%, followed by hotels, cafes and restaurants, at 95.82%.
Turkey’s inflation rate rose 3.18% on a monthly basis, mainly due to higher prices of alcoholic beverages, tobacco, hotels, cafes and restaurants.
April’s inflation rate was the highest annual increase since November 2022, when inflation was about 85%.
The nearly 70% increase in the CPI in April was an impressive but smaller increase than many analysts had expected, but economists said hopes of a rate cut remain a long way off.
Turkey’s central bank raised its key interest rate to 50% amid a continued need to tackle soaring domestic inflation. The bank said in March that it would maintain a tight monetary stance until it saw a “significant and sustained decline in underlying monthly inflation trends.”
“Turkey’s inflation rose slightly slower than expected at 69.8% year-on-year in April (consensus forecast 70.3%), a positive sign that price pressures are easing again,” Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist at London-based Capital Economics, wrote in a Friday note.
“We believe inflation will decline in the second half of the year, but we are less optimistic about the pace of de-inflation. … Given this, we still do not expect central banks to start cutting rates until next year.”
