Author: Alaattin Aktas (Alaattin Aktas)

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS Recep Tayyip Erdogan removed any doubt as to what would PRESIDENT happen with the policy rate until the end of 2022. It’ll be brought down to single digits by the end of this year. Rate cuts started in September 2021. This year, they started in August. The 7-month policy rate, which was...

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS Everyone is thinking about who will win the elections nowadays. However, it’s also important to focus on the economic policy following the elections The economy is caught in an ‘interest rate’ (IR) trap. IRs have been forcibly reduced. Maturities were shortened. The system is waiting for elections at home and developments abroad....

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS We are in big trouble. Namely, with regards to the FX-protected TRY deposit account (KKM), which was introduced as an invention begrudged by the world. Apart from sources transferred from the budget and the Central Bank (CB) to KKM owners, the actual disaster will emerge when the implementation ends. KKM is an...

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS Different evaluations are made based on the same index when industrial production data is released. Changes, compared to the previous month and year, show a difference in the real production level. Production remained 20.9% lower in July, as compared to June, and rose by 3.1% as compared to July 2021. To understand...

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS Politicians want the decline in inflation to be perceived as a decline in prices. Inflation means continuous price hikes. When we say inflation decreases, we mean a slowdown in the rate of increase but not a decline in prices. Annual inflation will fall in December 2022 and January 2023 as the significant...

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS Although September 1 is World Peace Day, we celebrated it as ‘Price Hike Day’ in Turkey. Some price hikes affect only those who consume that product while others concern all goods and services production. The new hike in electiricty and natural gas prices as of September will affect all goods and services....

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS Turkey’s principal payment burden for its domestic debt jumped TRY 524bn and the interest rate burden soared TRY 1.7tr in a year. Now, let’s take a look at the change in the composition of the domestic debt stock in a year. The structure of the debt stock showed a limited change over...

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS The Central Bank’s policy rate was cut for the first time this year. It was reduced from 14% to 13%. Inflation hovers around 80% while the interest rate is at 13%. I read the statement following the Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting. There was stated why the interest rate was reduced...

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS The current account deficit (CAD) totaled USD 3.5bn in June as expected. The 6-month CAD reached USD 32.4bn. The 1-year CAD amounted to USD 32.7bn. The CAD totaled USD 223m in the second half (H2) of 2021. The same trend will continue this year albeit not as much as last year. The...

BY ALAATTIN AKTAS The government has blamed its economic failures on foreign actors for years, so much so that many people have internalized the story. Foreign actors are responsible for all adverse economic developments, including price hikes, foreign exchange (FX) rate hikes or even insufficient hikes in wages. Eventually it became necessary to find domestic...