Turkey Inflation Falls To 30.9% From 44% In 12 Months

Turkey’s annual inflation slowed in December to 30.9 percent, a fourth straight month of declines and well below the 44.4 percent posted a year earlier, official figures showed Monday.

The 12-month annual average for 2025 as a whole stood at 34.9 per cent, down from 58.5 per cent in 2024, Turkey’s TUIK statistics agency said.

The figure was in line with expectations of Turkey’s central bank, which had forecast year-end inflation of around 31-33 per cent.

In May 2024, inflation stood at 75 percent before starting to fall, with the figure now at its lowest level since November 2021.

Turkey has experienced double-digit inflation since 2019, making life increasingly more expensive for millions of people, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered interest rate cuts in a bid to spur growth.

Over the past year, consumer prices rose notably in education with an increase of 66 percent, housing (49.5 per cent), food (28.3 per cent), and healthcare costs (30.1 per cent), TUIK figures showed.

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The official figures are disputed by ENAG, a group of independent economists that publishes its own data every month, with the organisation saying year-on-year inflation stood at 56.14 per cent in December.

They said that month-on-month, prices had risen by 2.11 per cent in December from November.

Last month, Turkey’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate to 38 per cent from 39.5 per cent as annual inflation slowed.

But it warned that despite showing signs of improvement, inflation expectations and pricing behaviour “continue to pose risks to the disinflation process”.

AFP