Turkey’s Central Bank Chief Says Inflation to Decline Gradually

(Bloomberg) -- Go inside the global economy with Stephanie Flanders in her new podcast, Stephanomics. Subscribe via Pocket Cast or iTunes.

Turkey’s Central Bank Governor Murat Cetinkaya expects price growth to gradually decelerate as core inflation measures are already showing a slowdown, according to his presentation at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington that was published by the central bank.

The country’s current-account balance is expected to maintain its improving trend, Cetinkaya said. Developments with domestic demand and the bank’s tight monetary policy have led to some improvement in inflation indicators and the central bank will continue to use all available instruments to achieve price stability, according to the governor.

Turkish consumer prices rose 19.7 percent from a year earlier in March, with the core measure that strips out the impact of volatile items such as gold, food and energy dropping to 17.5 percent. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook sees average consumer price growth slowing to 17.5 percent in 2019 and to 14.1 percent next year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Asli Kandemir in Istanbul at akandemir@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Peter Laca, Paul Jarvis

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.