Vice-president: Turkey to overcome price rise crisis

By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Turkish Vice-President Fuat Oktay has said that the country will cope with the difficulties caused by recent price increases, Yeni Shafak reported on November 28.

Oktay made the remark while answering the MPs’ questions during the 2022 budget discussions, the report.

“Being members of the [government] team that put tutelage, coups, terrorist organizations and political engineers to the dusty shelves of history, we will also abolish the 'trusteeship of speculation' and continue on our way completely independently. We will also overcome the difficulties caused by the recent price increases,” Oktay stressed.

He pointed out that thanks to the measures taken by the government, the Turkish economy managed to develop in the pandemic period when the entire world economy was negatively affected in terms of many indicators.

Oktay underlined that the government had updated its economic policy in line with the realities and needs of Turkey, and within this framework, a fully independent route focused on investment, production, employment and growth has been adopted.

He added that the government strongly focused on eliminating the factors that increase the demand for foreign exchange and works on improving the current account balance in the medium and long term.

“In this direction, we are implementing policies that will reduce imports of intermediate goods and energy expenditures, strengthen import substitution and domestic production, as well as, will increase exports. We are developing our country's export-oriented strong production structure,” Oktay stressed.

As a result of the foreseen investments, $26.5 billion annual contributions will be provided to the reduction of the current account deficit and additional job opportunities will be created for overall 83, 500 people. At this point, it is important that interest rates support the investment environment, he underlined.

Reminding that negative interest rates have been applied in many developed and developing countries, Oktay stated that important structural steps have been taken to eliminate the effects of currency attacks more quickly.

“After a while with the floating exchange rate regime, the price movements in the market that are not based on economic fundamentals will reach equilibrium at a rational point in terms of the market. In the coming period, we will increase the output by expanding the production areas both in the country and abroad and we will contribute to the formation of prices on a healthier basis,” Oktay noted.

He said that despite all the positive macro indicators, the recent movement in exchange rates cannot be explained with a single parameter. Oktay highlighted that Turkey has been subjected to a number of economic attacks by the interest lobbies as it started increasing its financial independence.

“No matter how hard they tried, the project of politically capturing Turkey through the economy did not work for any of them,” Oktay stressed.