ISTANBUL: Turkey’s annual inflation slowed in December to 30.9 percent, a fourth straight month of declines and well below the 44.4 percent posted a year earlier, official figures showed Monday.The 12-month annual average for 2025 as a whole stood at 34.9 percent, down from 58.5 percent in 2024, Turkey’s TUIK statistics agency said.The figure was in line with expectations of Turkey’s central bank, which had forecast year-end inflation of around 31-33 percent. In May 2024, inflation stood at 75 percent before starting to fall, with the figure now at its lowest level since November 2021.Turkey has experienced double-digit inflation since 2019, making life increasingly more expensive for millions of people, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered interest rate cuts in a bid to spur growth.Over the past year, consumer prices rose notably in education with an increase of 66 percent, housing (49.5 percent), food (28.3 percent) and healthcare costs (30.1 percent), TUIK figures showed. The official figures are disputed by ENAG, a group of independent economists that publishes its own data every month, with the organisation saying year-on-year inflation stood at 56.14 percent in December. They said that month-on-month, prices had risen by 2.11 percent in December from November. Last month, Turkey’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate to 38 percent from 39.5 percent as annual inflation slows. But it warned that despite showing signs of improvement, inflation expectations and pricing behaviour “continue to pose risks to the disinflation process”.
