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February 1, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
Turkey’s inflation fever: central bank cuts forecast, eggplants vanish from shelves
was hiked to 13.4%. And in the fourth and final inflation report, released in October, the forecast was taken all the way up to 23.5%.
“Inflation remained below previous forecasts and market expectations as of end-2018,” according to Cetinkaya’s press briefing.
Giving further details of its latest inflation fore- cast, the central bank said there was a 70% prob- ability that inflation would be between 11.9% and 17.3% (with a mid-point of 14.6%) at end-2019.
The regulator kept its food inflation estimate for 2019 at 13% while its average oil price estimate was revised down to $63.1 per barrel from the $80 anticipated in the October report.
“Supermarkets so scared”
“#Turkey's supermarkets are so scared of being blamed for the high inflation in the country, they stop selling green peppers & eggplants and other expensive veggies altogether,” Fercan Yalinkilic
of Bloomberg said on Twitter, citing a Bloomberg report entitled “Erdogan Hunt for Treason in Price Hikes Depletes Veggie Shelves”.
Shamed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for failing to keep prices lower, some supermarkets have indeed stopped selling some ingredients widely used in Turkish cuisine, local daily Hur- riyet reported on January 29, adding that the
wholesale prices of the items had rocketed.
According to a regular report on “people’s infla- tion” released on January 29 by Birlesik Kamu-Is, a confederation of public workers’ unions, food prices rose by 14.75% m/m and 55.3% y/y in January.
Tornadoes and heavy rain last week in the south- ern province of Antalya, an important region for greenhouse farming, drove up prices of fresh fruit and vegetables, Muammer Komurcuoglu of Is Investment told Reuters, adding: "We will see the partial impact of the flood in Antalya on prices in January. The remaining impact of the price increase stemming from Antalya will be felt in February."
Vegetable prices rose by between 65% and 150% due to the unfavourable weather conditions in Antalya, local business daily Dunya reported.
Erdogan’s close ally, Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, also has his problems with supermarkets.
“We had a group of supermarkets that hid the products from people and started to charge them whatever they wanted. There are 34 managers of big supermarkets behind bars for violating the law,” Maduro said in September.
Central bank sees 8.2%
The Turkish central bank, meanwhile, contends that inflation will fall to 8.2% in 2020 before sta- bilising around the official target of 5% in the medium-term.
“According to the Central Bank of Turkey’s guidance annual inflation in January would be at around 20% levels in line with the consensus estimate. A Reuters survey resulted in a median