Nearly a month after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election, his government is forging a new course in economic policy.
Erdogan’s appointments of Mehmet Simsek to the post of leading the finance and treasury ministry, and of Hafize Gaye Erkan, a former Wall Street banker, as central bank chief, signalled his readiness to reverse course from his unorthodox policies.
The new cabinet’s moves are to tackle the crippling economic crisis, which has seen inflation rates soar and the lira plunging to record lows as the country battles a cost-of-living crisis and depleted foreign reserves.
Here are some of the new policies and the current state of Turkey’s economy:
Hiked interest rate marks U-turn
On Thursday, Turkey’s central bank hiked its key rate by 650 basis points to 15 percent, the first hike in the country since early 2021.
The central bank’s policy committee said the shift “will be further strengthened as much as needed in a timely and gradual manner until a significant improvement in the inflation outlook is achieved”.
It said it raised rates “in order to establish the disinflation course as soon as possible, to anchor inflation expectations, and to control the deterioration in pricing behaviour”.
The move was a reversal of Erdogan’s policy, taking place after years of monetary easing in which the one-week repo rate had been cut to 8.5 percent from 19 percent in 2021.
Turkey’s annual inflation was just below 40 percent last month after it hit a 24-year high above 85 percent in October last year.
Source : Aljazeera