Maslak is a financial and business center in Istanbul’s Sarir district.
Ihan Altun | moment Getty Images
Turkey’s annual consumer price inflation rose to 67.07% in February, the Turkish Statistical Institute said Monday, coming in above expectations.
Analysts polled by Reuters had predicted that annual inflation would rise to 65.7 percent last month.
According to the statistics agency, the hotels, cafes and restaurants combined sector saw the highest annual inflation rate of 94.78 percent, followed by education at 91.84 percent, while health at 81.25 percent and transportation at 77.98 percent.
Consumer prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages jumped 71.12% year-on-year in February and recorded a surprisingly large monthly increase of 8.25%.
The country’s inflation rate from January to February was 4.53 percent.
The strong data is raising concerns that Turkey’s central bank, which last month signaled that its painful eight-month-long hiking cycle was over, may return to tightening.
“The stronger-than-expected rise in Turkish inflation to 67.1% y/y in February adds to our concerns that it comes on the back of a sharp rise in inflation in January and strength in household spending growth in Q4, ” Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist at London-based Capital Economics, wrote in a research note on Monday.
“Core price pressures continue to run hot and if this continues, the likelihood of the central bank resuming a tightening cycle will only increase in the coming months,” he said.
Some analysts have predicted that the inflation rate will drop to 35% by the end of this year. According to Capital Economics, the latest data “shows that inflationary pressures in the economy remain very strong and suggest that the process of disintermediation has been pushed earlier this year.”