Finance Minister Şimşek confident inflation will continue to decline

Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has voiced confidence that inflation will continue to decline and that targets will be met.

In an interview with private broadcaster NTV on Oct. 15, Şimşek noted that inflation peaked in May but declined by 26 points since then.

"We will increase our credibility by converging to our targets. We will eventually meet our inflation targets, and we will continue to do whatever it takes to do so," he said.

The minister noted that services inflation is running high.

"If services inflation had not been sticky, we would perhaps be much closer to our inflation target today," Şimşek said, adding that the economic program is yielding results.

The annual inflation rate slowed from 51.97 percent in August to 49.38 percent in September, according to the latest official data.

In the medium-term program, the government's inflation targets for 2024 and 2025 are 41.5 percent and 17.5 percent, respectively. The government expects the annual inflation rate to decline to 9.7 percent in 2026 and further down to 7 percent in the following year.

The current account deficit is the Turkish economy's "soft underbelly," said Şimşek, adding that last year, before the program [was started to be implemented], the current account deficit was very high.

"In the first year, we set an ambitious target of lowering the deficit to 6 percent of national income. Today, the current account deficit has fallen below 1 percent," the minister added.

"We aim to bring the current account deficit permanently below 2.5 or 2 percent… We want to solve Türkiye's external fragility permanently," he said.

Türkiye's current account surplus widened from $778 million in July to $4.3 billion in August.

The current...