Turkey’s annual inflation rate is over 82 percent, finds research group

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Founded by a group of academics and announcing alternative inflation rates in Turkey, the Inflation Research Group (ENAG) estimated that Turkey's monthly consumer inflation rate was 19.35 percent and its annual inflation rate was 82.81 percent in December 2021.

This is the highest inflation rate recorded since 2002.

ENAGrup Consumer Price Index increased by %19.35 in December, 2021.

2021 annual price increase in ENAGrup Consumer Price Index (E-CPI) is %82.81.

— ENAG (@ENAGRUP) January 3, 2022

Shortly after the ENAG shared these figures, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), which is responsible for producing official statistics on Turkey, released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for December 2021 and indicated that the monthly consumer inflation rate was 13.58 percent and the annual consumer inflation rate was 36.08 percent in December.

When the ENAG calculated the prices based on the sub-groups of the TurkStat, the lowest monthly price increase was seen in furniture with 1.98 percent and the highest monthly increase was observed in the prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages with 35.75 percent.

In its own micro-consumption bundles, the ENAG found the lowest monthly increase in prices in electricity fuel with 0.32 percent while the highest price increase was seen in the bundle of oil with 48.92 percent.

Click for the ENAG press release on inflation

About Inflation Research Group

The Inflation Research Group (ENAG) was established by a group of academics with the aim of announcing the inflation rates in Turkey on an hourly, daily and monthly basis. The group aims to momentarily calculate the inflation data by momentarily following the changes in exchange rates, interest rates and share prices at the stock exchange.

The ENAG announced its first data in September 2020. According to this announcement, the monthly inflation rate was 3.61 percent while the TurkStat announced the same rate as 0.97 percent.

There are 418 items in the index of the TurkStat and the ENAG's index has 314 of these items, which accounts for 80 percent of TurkStat's index. The remaining 104 items are not included in the calculation by the ENAG on the grounds that they do not have a significant effect on inflation and do not completely reflect the consumption behaviors.

However, in order to enable a comparison with the TurkStat's inflation rate, the price changes in these 104 items are taken from the TurkStat and added to the inflation rate calculated by the ENAG as the remaining 20 percent. So, while the items' index and weights are handled in the same way as the TurkStat, there are differences in measurement and methodology.

TurkStat was previously criticized for adding or excluding certain items in calculating the inflation rate. (HA/SD)