Inflation reached 58.9% year-on-year in August in the country, the highest since December 2022, according to official data published on Monday.
While prices increased almost 60% compared to last August, they rose by 9.1% compared to the previous month, fuelled by the depreciation of the Turkish lira.
Following eight months of decline, inflation started accelerating again in July, reaching 47.8% year-on-year. Its lowest level in a year and a half was 38.2% year-on-year in June, while its highest was 85.5% in October 2022.
Although the official figures are high, they might not even reveal the entirety of the problem; independent economists from the Inflation Research Group (Enag) put the year-on-year rise in consumer prices at as high as 128%.
The Turkish Central Bank whose mission is to guard price stability, has raised its main key interest rate from 8.5% to 25% since June to curb inflation.
At the end of July, when inflation started accelerating again, the bank revised its forecasts, saying that inflation will reach 58% by the end of 2023 — more than double the previous projections — before returning to “stability” from 2025.
Turkey has been experiencing uninterrupted double-digit inflation since the end of 2019, making the cost of living difficult to bear for families across the country.
