, which is accused of underreporting Turkey’s inflation figures, is using prices for its basket of 100 items of goods and services much lower than their actual market price, according to a report on the Ekonomim news website.){kind=link}
The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), which is accused of underreporting Turkey’s inflation figures, is using prices for its basket of 100 items of goods and services much lower than their actual market price, according to a report on the Ekonomim news website.
Alaattin Aktaş, a columnist at Ekonomim, on Monday said he calculated the current prices of the items included in the consumer price index (CPI) using the figures from April 2022, when TurkStat stopped releasing the prices of the items individually, and the institute’s figures showing the change in the prices of those items in groups over the past 26 months.
According to a list of items obtained by Aktaş, when calculating June inflation, TurkStat, for example, considered the cost of a medical examination by a specialist to be TL 34 ($1.04), rent to be TL 5,845 ($178) and an egg to be TL 2.5 ($0.07), much lower than their market price.
“They were right to hide these figures [after April 2022]. … Among these 100 items … are prices that one simply can’t believe. TurkStat tries to provide an explanation for these prices, but they are still unbelievable,” the columnist said.
https://t.co/z2P1gpf4GB
İşte TÜİK'in devlet sırrı gibi sakladığı madde fiyatları.
Ama TÜİK fiyatları gizlemekte haklıymış!
Bunlar nasıl açıklanır ki!
✓Uzman doktor muayenesi 34 lira.
✓Yurt ücreti 457 lira.
✓Kira 5.845 lira.
✓Beyaz peynir 147 lira.
✓Yumurta 2.5 lira. pic.twitter.com/rsf49JcK98— Alaattin Aktaş (@Alaattin_Aktas) July 8, 2024
TurkStat announces inflation figures for the previous month at the beginning of the new month. It has been attracting more attention about the accuracy of its inflation figures particularly after an independent group of economists, ENAG, began to release its own inflation data, disputing the TurkStat figures.
ENAG’s inflation figures are sometimes twice the level announced by TurkStat.
Meanwhile, Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit, group deputy chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), criticized TurkStat’s latest inflation data for being “unrealistic” during a statement to the press on Monday, arguing that the figures don’t reflect Turkey’s economic reality.
Citing TurkStat figures provided by Aktaş for an egg and a kilo of onions, which are TL 2.5 ($0.07) and TL 7.76 ($0.2), respectively, the MP said: “There are no such prices in the markets where we do our shopping. Give us the address so we can go and shop at that market [where you claim these prices exist].”
Koçyiğit said TurkStat figures show monthly rent in Turkey to be TL 5,844 ($178), a figure she said she found impossible to cover the rent of even a room in Turkey’s major cities.
“Now we’re asking TurkStat where they rented this house. Let them tell us so we can all move to that city, to that neighborhood. Because we can’t find a price like this anywhere,” the MP said.
Erhan Çetinkaya, head of TurkStat, however, rebutted the criticism of the prices in TurkStat’s basket of goods and services at a news conference in Ankara on Tuesday. He said TurkStat no longer reveals the individual price of the goods and services because they vary in every part of the country and they need to work an extra day to come up with an average price for every one of the goods and services in the basket.
Koçyiğit’s criticism came days after the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DİSK) protested TurkStat’s latest inflation data, gathering outside the headquarters of the institute in Ankara. DİSK Chairwoman Arzu Çerkezoğlu, who led the demonstration, also claimed that the figures do not reflect the real economic challenges faced by Turkish citizens.
According to TurkStat, the rate of inflation for June was 1.64 percent, with an annual rate of 71.60 percent. The six-month inflation rate was calculated at 24.73 percent.
A recent survey conducted by MetroPoll revealed that an overwhelming majority of Turks, 61.7 percent, believe that TurkStat is releasing lower figures than the country’s actual inflation numbers.
Opposition parties and government skeptics have been criticizing TurkStat for not releasing accurate figures for important statistics such as inflation and unemployment, instead presenting statistics that fail to reflect market realities. The institute is accused of manipulating the numbers in order to mask the scale of the country’s economic deterioration under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.