Erdoğan vows finance management with international reputation

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has vowed to fight inflation and to establish a finance management team with global reputation.

“Eliminating the problems caused by the rise of prices and compensate for welfare losses are the most urgent issues in the days ahead,” Erdoğan said in a speech he delivered in Ankara after winning the second round of the presidential election.

Resolving those issues is not “difficult for us,” he added. “We proved that… when I was the prime minister, we brought inflation down to 6.2 percent and the interest rate down to 4.6 percent.”

Erdoğan recalled that the Central Bank’s main policy rate was slashed to 8.5 percent and said that inflation would also fall.

“Trust and stability. Those are the two important concepts. We will establish an economy management based on those two concepts.”

“We are designing with a finance management team that has international reputation and an economy focused on investment and employment,” Erdoğan said.

The Central Bank of Türkiye last week decided to keep its policy rate – one-week repo auction rate – unchanged at 8.5 percent.

The annual inflation rate, which climbed to 85.5 percent in October 2022, has been declining. Inflation eased from 50.5 percent in March to 43.7 percent in April, rising 2.39 percent month-on-month, according to the latest data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

Erdoğan also vowed to further develop the social support system to cover everyone in a way that no member of the society will feel excluded.

“We will maintain the momentum in the tourism industry which is the main source of income in the services industry,” he also said.

Reaction from business world

Business circles and associations have welcomed the outcome in the presidential runoff.

Uncertainties have been removed with the conclusion of the elections, said Mustafa Gültepe, the president of the Turkish Exporters’ Association (TİM).

“We are more hopeful about the new period. We believe we can quickly overcome the current problems with an economy management team which is expert in the production and export issues. However, I need to stress that we are going through a difficult period,” he said in a statement.

The main item on Türkiye’s agenda in this new period will be to maintain a balanced economic growth with stability, said Nail Olpak, the head of the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK).

“As the business world, we will continue to work for more production, more exports and work to create more jobs after the elections,” he added.

It is time to focus on the country’s main issues and to work together for a peaceful and prosperous society by moving “our economy to a developed level,” said Erdal Bahçıvan, board chairman of the Istanbul Chamber of Industry.