Vice President Yılmaz's message on the fight against inflation

Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz held various meetings in Edirne. Yılmaz first visited the Edirne Governor's Office. Following his visit, Yılmaz attended the Business World Meeting at the Edirne Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In his statement here, Yılmaz said, "There is a world that has still not recovered, especially after the pandemic. There is a world that is performing below its historical averages, both in terms of growth rate and trade. If you look at the last 20 years, the world economy has grown by 3.6 percent. If you look at the 2020-2022 period, the growth rate has fallen due to the pandemic and post-pandemic shocks. There was some recovery last year, reaching 3 percent. It is expected to exceed 3 slightly this year. In other words, there is global growth well below that 3.6. On the other hand, competition in the world has now increased, bloc formations are rising, and commercial competition has intensified; we see that protectionist tendencies are strengthening. I would like to express that it is not an environment where trade develops as easily as it used to. Under these conditions, Turkey has shown a very good performance in terms of growth. It displayed a truly significant growth performance in the 2020-2022 period. We had a growth of 4.5 percent in 2023. While the world grew by 3 percent, we grew by 4.5 percent. When we come to this year, we hope to see a growth of around 4 percent this year as well. In our medium-term program, we again expect a performance above the world average. We had a growth of 5.7 percent in the first quarter. We will hopefully reach this growth by continuing to grow at a certain level in the coming period. We are an important economy in the world. We are the 17th largest economy in the world in nominal dollar terms. When calculated according to purchasing power parity, we are the 11th largest economy in the world. Our national income exceeded 1.1 trillion dollars for the first time last year. To be precise, the figure for last year was 1 trillion 119 billion dollars. Our per capita income rose to 13 thousand 110 dollars, and we hope to carry this momentum into the future. Dear friends, our growth from last year to today has shown a different approach; we want to grow more through production rather than consumption, we say we want to grow more through investment and exports. While reducing inflation on one hand, we want to protect growth and employment on the other. This is not an easy task; for this to be achieved, we see the composition and components of growth as very important. We are striving for growth that stems more from production and exports," he said.

'YOU WILL SEE IT WILL DECLINE'

Touching upon inflation figures, Yılmaz said, "Our main trouble is inflation. Therefore, we placed inflation as our primary priority in the medium-term program we prepared last year and divided inflation into 3 periods. We said the first year would be a transition process. The 2nd year is the disinflation process, and the 3rd year is the permanent price stability period. We completed the transition process last May and have moved into the disinflation process. As you know, monthly inflation in June came in at 1.64. Annual inflation decreased by 3.8 points to 71.6. When July and August arrive, you will see that annual inflation will decline much faster. You will see inflation falling to around the 60s in July and around the 50s in August. We need to continue this struggle until we reach single-digit figures. We will strive to bring it down to 20s next year and to single-digit figures in 2026. There is a very positive trend in Central Bank reserves. Our reserves had fallen to 98.5 billion dollars in May last year. As of June 28, it has risen to a level of approximately 143 billion dollars. The figure we call net reserves excluding SWAP has also reached a very good level. Why is the strengthening of reserves important? It is very important in terms of reducing these risks and moving our country to a more advantageous and secure position. We experienced a disaster last year. We experienced a disaster that affected 14 million of our people in a region larger than many countries in terms of both population and geography. Emergency interventions are over, but now our main task is to rehabilitate these regions permanently; we are doing this under three headings. We are building permanent housing. We are building the destroyed infrastructure, from transportation to energy. On the other hand, we are trying to realize the socioeconomic development of those regions, from organized industrial zones to other issues. We are facing a total cost of around 104 billion dollars here. Just this year, we are allocating a resource of around 1 trillion 30 billion for earthquake region works in our central government budget," he concluded.

News Source: 12punto