ANKARA (Reuters) – The top of Turkey’s statistics institute has sought to calm criticism of its inflation knowledge, telling reporters on Tuesday its figures are calculated in the identical means as in different international locations and considerations are “unjust”.
Credibility considerations had been raised earlier this yr when Turkey’s Statistical Institute (TUIK) stated it didn’t have historic knowledge on product costs past Might 2022 and stopped sharing it.
Separate considerations had been raised final week when it launched knowledge exhibiting annual inflation fell greater than anticipated to beneath 72% in June from 75% a month earlier.
Addressing the historic knowledge considerations, the institute’s head, Erhan Cetinkaya, stated inflation was calculated on the premise of greater than 600,000 costs and beforehand printed product costs had “no indicative worth”.
“The product basket stays the place it’s, the tables that aren’t being printed are product costs… With the intention to announce product costs, one other day of labor is required,” Cetinkaya was quoted by broadcaster NTV and state-owned Anadolu Company as saying.
No nation publishes this knowledge as a part of their inflation figures, he added.
Hakan Kara, a former chief central financial institution economist who’s now at Bilkent College, was amongst these criticising TUIK’s transfer to cease publishing the information, saying it was required to calculate the buyer worth index in any case.
“Is TUIK destroying product costs each month after calculating the buyer worth index?” he stated in June.
Although TUIK has confronted questions over inflation calculations since 2018, a number of economists have stated – regardless of the dearth of the historic knowledge – that accuracy has improved since June 2023 when a brand new cupboard started an financial coverage U-turn.
Cetinkaya stated Turkey’s knowledge on official inflation and perceived inflation was “the closest to one another” in comparison with international friends and that perceived inflation was twice the official determine for Turks. TUIK makes use of international calculation strategies, he stated.
The central financial institution has hiked its coverage charge to 50% from 8.5% in June of 2023 to chill costs. The June inflation knowledge signalled the beginning of what’s anticipated to be a sustained slide.
Addressing considerations over the June knowledge, Cetinkaya stated that sure worth hikes could be mirrored in July figures.