Mahfi Eğilmez on interest rates and structural reform: 'Turkey is a truly interesting country'

Economist Mahfi Eğilmez, addressing comments made regarding his statements on interest rates, emphasized in a post on his personal blog that structural reforms are essential alongside interest rate adjustments, stating the following:

'I WROTE A BOOK BECAUSE I GOT TIRED OF ANSWERING'

"From the latest comments on social media, I understand that many people read the first sentence of a two-sentence comment but do not read the second, or they get stuck on the first sentence and erase the second from their memory. For example, I write, 'Increasing interest rates is necessary. But structural reforms must also be implemented alongside it; otherwise, an interest rate hike will not work.' Then, when the interest rate hike is implemented without structural reforms and fails, and I criticize this situation, some friends say: 'Didn't you say everything would be fine if interest rates were raised?' However, what I have always said was: 'Interest rates alone can sink an economy, but they cannot save an economy on their own. Structural reforms must absolutely be implemented alongside them.' When I write this, people then ask what structural reforms are. I wrote a book titled 'Structural Reforms and Turkey' because I got tired of answering them one by one."

'TURKEY IS LITERALLY A SOCIAL LABORATORY'

Turkey is a truly interesting country, literally a social laboratory. Every day, one is tossed in a different direction; every day, an event arises that surprises you. Sometimes, when we are tired of being surprised, we just say, 'We've experienced this before,' with a resigned attitude and move on. If a similar situation were to occur in, for example, Finland or Denmark, scientists would work on it for weeks trying to analyze it. The existence of people who, until yesterday, considered interest rates forbidden (haram) and now see them as a miracle that will save the economy on its own, is, for instance, a very typical example.

I am sharing one of my articles written on these topics and some of my old X comments. If you take a look at them, you will see that there has been no change in my thoughts and that from the very beginning, I have argued that structural reforms must be implemented alongside interest rate hikes, and that otherwise, an interest rate hike alone would not work."

News Source: 12punto