Each country has its way of containing inflation. In Brazil, they created several currencies until reaching the model we use today; in Argentina the president is a friend of the statistical agency and orders the figures to be camouflaged; in Turkey, however, President Erdogan's genius extends beyond macroeconomic boundaries.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sacked the head of the state statistics agency after data showed last year's inflation rate hit a 19-year high of 36.1%.
“Efficient measure to combat inflation. I want to see the next [Head of Statistics] have the audacity to beat this record.”, commented Brazilian economist Fernando Ulrich on Twitter.
Sait Erdal Dincer, the now former chairman of the TUIK statistics institute, was just the latest in a series of economic layoffs by Erdogan, who has sacked three central bank governors since July 2019.
Erdogan has criticized high interest rates, which he believes cause inflation – the opposite of conventional economic thinking.
The 2021 inflation figure released by Dincer has angered the pro-government and opposition camps.
The opposition said it was underreported, claiming actual cost-of-living increases were at least twice as large.
Meanwhile, Erdogan reportedly criticized the statistics agency in particular for publishing data he said exaggerated the scale of Turkey's economic malaise.
Dincer seemed to sense his impending doom.
“I sit in this office now. Tomorrow it will be someone else,” he said in an interview with the Dunya business newspaper earlier this month.
“It doesn't matter who the president is. Can you imagine that hundreds of my colleagues could tolerate or be silent about the publication of an inflation rate very different from the one they set?”
“I have a responsibility to 84 million people,” he added.
interest battle
Erhan Cetinkaya, 40, who has been vice president of bank watchdog BDDK since 2019, has been named Dincer's successor.
The agency should publish the inflation data for January tomorrow (3).
“This will only increase concerns about data reliability, in addition to major concerns about economic policy settings,” Timothy Ash of BlueBay Asset Management said in a note to clients.
Caught in a currency crisis, Turkey has been dogged by rising inflation, which reached its highest level during Erdogan's 19-year rule in December and which a Reuters poll on Friday showed it must have hit a high of nearly 20 years by about 47 percent in January.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has become increasingly popular in Turkey. This is shown by the number of Google queries for the cryptocurrency, which skyrocketed after the latest developments from the country in April last year.
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Genius Content: Turkey Reports 36% Annual Inflation and Head of Statistics is Fired appeared first on Cointimes.