Pensions to be increased by 43 percent

ANKARA

Pensions will be increased by a total of 42.6 percent for the first six months of 2024, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced.

The government will offer an extra 5 percent increase in wages for retired people and bring the minimum pension amount to 10,000 Turkish Liras ($332) from a previous 7,500 liras.

“We work hard to increase the welfare level of our people, especially our employees and retirees,” Erdoğan said in a press conference on Jan. 16, following a cabinet meeting.

“We will keep our promise to protect employees against inflation in the coming periods,” he added.

The economic management team had foreseen the increase in the wages of retirees in the medium-term term program and made the necessary preparations for it, Erdoğan said.

“We are making an additional resource of 200 billion liras available to our retirees,” he added.

The announced six-month increase in pensions is above the annual expected inflation, Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz wrote on the social media platform X.

“At a time when we are healing the wounds from the biggest disaster in our history, facing geopolitical risks and waging a determined fight against inflation, we stand by our retirees with all our resources,” Yılmaz said.

The annual inflation picked up from 61.98 percent in November 2023 to 64.77 percent in December, with the monthly increase in consumer prices slowing from 3.28 percent to 2.93 percent.

The government’s medium-term program forecast the annual inflation to decline to 33 percent in 2024.