AL-Monitor reports on Turkey’s problems with its economy:
Turkey’s consumer inflation has hit a 24-year high of 73.5% and the Turkish lira has lost 49% of its value since September as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pursued a controversial policy to lower interest rates and promote growth at the expense of inflation spiraling out of control.
Ouch. Maybe we’re doing better than expected. Although, honestly, I didn’t understand this next paragraph:
Consumer prices rose 2.98% in May to bring annual inflation to 73.5%, the highest since 1998, according to data released Friday by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK).
A big recovery for the consumer?
The monthly rate was below the projections of economists, rekindling a debate on how reliable the official data is. The median estimates in polls conducted by Reuters and the state-run Anatolia news agency had stood at 4.8% and 5.49%, respectively. Many observers also noted that TUIK, whose chief was controversially fired earlier this year, stopped releasing detailed price tables this month.
So hard to say. Maybe I’ll ask my Arts Editor to return to a former life as a banker, spiritually speaking, and interpret this for me.
Or will she die laughing at that entire idea?
