Turkey’s rate of annual inflation rose to 69.8 percent in April despite interest rate hikes aimed at taming soaring consumer prices, Agence France-Presse reported, citing official data on Friday.
Inflation had reached 68.5 percent in March, also an increase from the previous month, as the country’s struggles to overcome a cost-of-living crisis.
ENAG, a group of independent economists, said their own calculations put the year-on-year figure at almost 125 percent.
The central bank began to hike its key rate in June 2023, gradually taking it from 8.5 percent to 50 percent after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan loosened his objections to such monetary policies.
It decided last week to keep borrowing costs steady but warned it could raise them again if inflation deteriorates.
Erdoğan long blamed inflation on high interest rates, even though it is the conventional policy at central banks worldwide to raise borrowing costs in order to lower inflation.
But after winning re-election last year, he returned to economic orthodoxy and expressed full confidence in his economic team led by Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek.
