Turkey’s inflation marched higher in October, when the embattled lira shed value to finish as the world’s worst-performing currency.
Consumer prices last month rose 11.9% from a year earlier, slightly less than forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey, whose median estimate was 12%.
Prices advanced a monthly 2.1% in October, Turkey’s statistics agency, or Turkstat, said Tuesday.
Food costs, which make up just over a fifth of the consumer goods basket, rose an annual 16.5%, up from 14.95% last month. Food inflation remains above the official year-end estimate of 13.5%
Energy inflation, a key driver of broader price pressures, was 3.98%, down from 6.77% in September
Core inflation -- which strips out volatile items such as food and energy -- climbed to 11.5% from 11.3% the previous month, a sign that some of the underlying cost pressures may be increasing
According to Bloomberg, Turkey’s currency was little changed after the data release and traded 0.3% weaker at 8.4471 per dollar as of 10:15 am in Istanbul
The lira reached historic lows and depreciated 7.5% against the dollar in October. It’s down more than 29% for the year.
Turkey’s central bank last week raised its inflation projections for the end of this year by more than three percentage points to 12.1%.
Retail prices in Istanbul, the country’s largest city, rose 2.45% on a monthly basis and an annual 12.4% in October
