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There’s speculation that business people have been selling their homes on paper to close friends to benefit from favourable mortgage rates. From now on, they may also benefit from the latest corporate loans packages on offer.
If you strain hard to pinpoint the economic actualities through the rose-tinted specs that officials want you to view the economy, it’s instructive to consider the targeting of the latest state-directed incentives. They are focused on completing housing projects or boosting employment, suggesting where you can find the most problematic fields in the economy.
“Interest rates on housing loans are currently at around 0.99%. Pent-up demand has been released following the rate cuts. Home sales jumped 15.4% y/y to 147,000 units in September, while mortgage-financed property sales soared 410% percent in the month on an annual basis, capturing a 39.4% share in total homes sales,” the Turkish Real Estate and Real Estate Investment Companies’ Association (GYODER).
The latest data from the Turkish banking industry watchdog BDDK show that the volume of housing loans increased to TRY189.8bn as of October 18 from TRY189bn a week before and TRY186.6bn as of September 27.
The latest data from the Turkish banking industry watchdog BDDK show that the volume of housing loans increased to TRY189.8bn as of October 18 from TRY189bn a week before and TRY186.6bn as of September 27.
Those who still rely on the Erdogan administration’s official data in their planning and pricing can confidently take Albayrak’s figures as amounting to an early announcement of official data releases. He is by far the best forecaster of Turkey’s official figures. The close associate he appointed as the head of national statistics institute TUIK must be in awe.
The last day of October also saw central bank governor Murat Uysal confirm during the inflation report news conference that the national lender has cut its end-2019 inflation forecast to that very same 12% figure that the government had already come up with.
Media and finance industry representatives get just four chances a year to catch the central bank chief at inflation report presentations. A pile of questions were thus waiting on the calculation methodologies he is contributing to central
16 TURKEY Country Report November 2019 www.intellinews.com
