Turkey's inflation accelerates to nearly 70% in April

Turkey's inflation accelerated to 69.8% annually for the month of April, the Turkish Statistical Institute reported Friday.

The highest consumer price increases year-on-year were in education, with a 103.86% jump, and hotels, cafes and restaurants, with an increase of 95.82%.

On a monthly basis, Turkey's inflation increased 3.18%, led by price rises in alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and hotels, cafes and restaurants.

April's inflation rate marks the highest annual increase since November 2022, when inflation was around 85%.

While an eye-watering figure, April's nearly-70% CPI read was actually a smaller jump than many analysts had expected. But any hopes of interest rate cuts are a long way off, economists said.

Turkey's central bank has hiked its key interest rate to 50%, citing the continuing need to counter climbing inflation in the country. The bank said in March that "tight monetary stance will be maintained until a significant and sustained decline in the underlying trend of monthly inflation is observed."

"The slightly smaller-than-expected rise in Turkish inflation in April to 69.8% y/y (consensus 70.3%) offers encouraging signs that price pressures have softened again," Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist at London-based Capital Economics, wrote in a note Friday.

"We think that inflation will fall in the second half of this year, but we are not quite as optimistic on the pace of disinflation ... Against this backdrop, we still don't expect the central bank to shift to cuts until next year."