Turkey’s annual inflation rate approached 65 percent in December, reaching a new high for 2023 and putting the country on course to meet an expected peak of 70-75 percent in May.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s new team of market-friendly economists expects inflation to start falling from near-record highs within four months.
The rate reached a decades-long high of 85 percent in October of 2022 and then fell off before resuming a steady climb.
Turkey’s official annual inflation rate ticked up to 64.77 in December from 61.98 percent in November.
But the month-on-month pace of increases of 2.93 percent was the smallest of the past six months.
“The underlying inflation trend improved slightly, and inflation expectations stabilised in the last months,” said Bartosz Sawicki, a market analyst at the Conotoxia investment house.
Liam Peach of Capital Economics said the latest figure “will generally comfort the central bank”.
