Turkey’s inflation accelerates to nearly 70% in April

Turkey’s inflation accelerated to 69.8% annually for the month of April, the Turkish Statistical Institute reported Friday.

The highest consumer price increases year on year were in education, with a 103.86% jump, and hotels, cafes and restaurants, with an increase of 95.82%.

On a monthly basis, Turkey’s inflation climbed 3.18%, led by price rises in alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and hotels, cafes and restaurants.

April’s inflation rate marks the highest annual increase since November 2022, when inflation was around 85%.

While an eye-watering figure, April’s nearly 70% CPI read was actually a smaller jump than many analysts had expected. But any hopes of interest rate cuts are a long way off, economists said.

Turkey’s central bank has hiked its key interest rate to 50%, citing the continuing need to counter climbing inflation in the country. The bank said in March that “tight monetary stance will be maintained until a significant and sustained decline in the underlying trend of monthly inflation is observed.”

“The slightly smaller-than-expected rise in Turkish inflation in April to 69.8% y/y (consensus 70.3%) offers encouraging signs that price pressures have softened again,” Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist at London-based Capital Economics, wrote in a note Friday.

“We think that inflation will fall in the second half of this year, but we are not quite as optimistic on the pace of disinflation. … Against this backdrop, we still don’t expect the central bank to shift to cuts until next year.”