Erdal Saglam: Poor governance in Turkey is the reason for double digit inflation

Sure, the global surge in the price of commodities is important, but it is also unfair to cite this as the only reason for Turkey's rising inflation.

 

Turkey began to ease its fiscal discipline in 2007 and to neglect the requirements of the economic program being implementing up until that time.

 

Even though it was expected that "easing would lessen following to the general election," the situation worsened, and as the tension in society increased, fiscal discipline eased more.Â

 

This is how Turkey alone caused double digits inflation.  Â

 

This means that had the country continued to maintain fiscal discipline and not allowed the tensions to rise; it could have maintained its yearly one digit inflation rate despite the worsening global conditions.

 

We chimed in the opinion that "Returning to double digit inflation rates for Turkey is probable if the ongoing economy politics continues to be followed," a few times in this column, even before the closure case was filed against the ruling AKP.

 

The global storm was approaching but nobody thought of taking any preventive measures to protect against it.

 

It was obvious that the money injected into global economies to ease the credit crunch would cause inflation in the end, and this would also eventually affect us if no preventive measures were in place.Â

 

I wish I had been mistaken in my previous opinion in which I speculated that "the government would face a dilemma between growth in the economy and inflation and would use its initiative in favor of economic growth."

 

But unfortunately we were not mistaken.

 

Let me reiterate an opinion that previously stated;

 

By decreasing the inflation rate to single figures and providing economic stability as a result of this was the main factor allowing Turkey to maintain high growth over the past five years.Â

 

An increase in inflation to a double-digit rate is a psychological issue.

 

Global conditions are poor, but this can not be considered the cause; we reached double-digit inflation solely because of an inability to manage the economy.