Turkey’s inflation rate rises to 79.6% in July

Turkey’s annual rate of inflation neared 80 per cent in July, heightening pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates despite resistance from president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Consumer price inflation was 2.37 per cent in July, lifting the annual rate to 79.6 per cent, the state statistics office said on Wednesday.

Economists had forecast an annual CPI rate of 80.1 per cent.

Erdoğan has rejected the established economic orthodoxy that raising interest rates will help to curb inflation and has insisted on keeping the central bank’s borrowing rate at 14 per cent, despite prices rising at their fastest in decades.

Some analysts and opposition parties believe the true level of inflation is higher than the official figures. Turkey’s CPI has been stuck in the double digits for most of the past three years.