The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, fired the head of the state statistics agencyaccording to a decree published on Saturday, after the publication of inflation figures that upset the power.
The high position fired, Sait Erdal Dincerit was under fire after publishing this month’s consumer price data, which put annual inflation at a 19-year high of 36.1%.
“I have a responsibility towards 84 million people”said Sait Erdal Dincer, explaining to the business daily Dunya which is simply impossible to publish inflation figures different from those verified by its services.
For its part, the opposition claimed that that rate was below the real increase in the cost of living, which would be at least twice as high.
According to official figures released earlier this month, Turkey’s annual inflation soared much higher than expected, to 36.08% year-on-year in December, the highest since September 2002.
In month-on-month terms, consumer prices rose 13.58%according to the Turkish Statistical Institute, against a forecast of Reuters of 9%. The annual inflation forecast was 30.6%.
The producer price index increased by 19.08% mom in December, with an annual increase of 79.89%according to published data, which is largely due to the increase in import prices due to currency crisis.
This is the highest annual CPI since 37.0% in September 2002, before President Erdogan’s AK Party first came to power in November of that year. The forecasts of 13 economists ranged between 26.4% and 37.3%.
Inflation has hovered around 20% in recent monthsdriven by the lira falls to record lows after the central bank cut its official interest rate by 500 basis points since September, under pressure from Erdogan.
Erdogan did not justify his decision to dismiss the director of the agency and replace him with Erhan Cetinkayawho had served as deputy chairman of Turkey’s banking regulator.
“This decision only lack of confidence in official data will increasein a context in which economic policy is already a source of concern”, considered analyst Timothy Ash, of Blue Bay Assets.
The increase in consumer prices, more than seven times higher than the government’s initial objective, is explained by the almost 45% drop in the value of the Turkish lira against the dollar despite a series of emergency measures announced in December by the head of state.
This inflation is not only damaging the economy, but also Erdogan’s popularity that in January he had promised to “reduce inflation to single digits as quickly as possible”.
In addition, the Turkish president also appointed his former deputy prime minister Bekir Bozdag as Minister of Justice replacing veteran Abdulhamit Gul.
“The Minister of Justice was replaced, the president of the Tüik [la oficina nacional de estadísticas] was fired before the new inflation figures were published, and we don’t know why,” former Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, who left the Justice and Development Party (AKP), to which Erdogan belongs, said on Twitter to found the Party of Democracy and Progress (DEVA).
(With information from Reuters and AFP)
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Source-www.infobae.com