Turkey has raised its year-end inflation forecast to 28.4%, Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said Sunday as he announced the country’s medium-term economic program for 2027-2029.
Speaking in a televised address, Yilmaz said inflation was expected to start falling again in the fourth quarter of 2026 and reach 28.4% by the end of the year.
The new forecast is much higher than the government’s earlier estimate. In last year’s medium-term program for 2026-2028, the government had forecast year-end inflation at 16%.
Under the new program, inflation is expected to fall to 21% in 2027, 13.5% in 2028 and 9% in 2029.
Official data showed that Turkey’s annual inflation rate eased to 31.51% in August from 31.75% in July.
Yilmaz said the war in the Middle East was a major reason for the upward revision of the inflation forecast.
He said the central bank estimated that the war’s direct and indirect effects on inflation were around 7 percentage points.
Turkey’s annual inflation has remained above 30% since December 2021. It peaked at more than 75% in May 2024 before starting to decline.
Yilmaz said the government had made significant progress in combating inflation, which remained the main priority of its economic program.
He said inflation, which reached 75.5% in May 2024, had started showing a clear downward trend as a result of the policies implemented by the government.
