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Head-on collision
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Export figures are down by over 25 percent. Import figures are up by almost 40 percent. Capacity utilization in industry has dropped to its lowest levels in recent history. One in every four small and medium sized enterprises have closed while three in every four have scaled down their business and laid off almost 75 percent of their workers.
The government introduced yesterday its fourth package against the festering crisis. Due to the lowered value added tax and special consumption tax rates on a variety of products, ranging from new homes to cars and the recently introduced campaigns by the manufacturers of household appliances, the government is hoping to revive consumption and thus ease the staggering effects of the crisis on the economy.
Most economists have condemned the latest measures of the government as "too little, too late" but still better than taking no measure at all or denying the impacts of the global crisis on the Turkish economy with some odd claims such as "Thank God, the crisis will past Turkey tangentially!"
The government has also started pumping optimism into the market saying that a new standby deal with the International Monetary Fund (which has been pending and being negotiated inconclusively since September last year, probably because of the upcoming March 29 local elections) will be concluded soon. When? Probably just few days before the elections so that the government could deny speculations that it withheld a deal with the IMF because such a new contract would not allow it engage in election economics and distribute alms in hopes of buying votes of the electorate. As they say in Turkish, the goat is concerned of its life, but the butcher is busy calculating how many kilos of meat he can make out of the goat.
Direful figures
Unfortunately because of allegations of political meddling, the Turkish Statistical Institution, or TÜİK, has lost all its prestige and the figures it releases have little credibility. Still, that is the only state agency engaged in statistics in the country and despite all our doubts regarding the accuracy of the figures it release, those figures are the available ones.
TÜİK released Monday its monthly unemployment statistics. The figures are so awful that even if they were "politically modified" they still reflect a desperate situation. Accordingly, the climb in the unemployment rate continued for the seventh consecutive month in December 2008 and reached an alarming 13.6 percent level. The unemployment rate in November 2008 was yet another record level of 12.3 percent, but the December figure demonstrated that the upward trend continued at a very terrifying rate that implied that the figure for January this year might be higher than 15 percent. Last year in December, the unemployment rate was at 10.6 percent and we were all accusing the government of failing to provide a remedy to the high unemployment rate. The figures showed that in December 2008 the "registered" unemployed figure increased by 838,000 compared to the corresponding period in 2007 and reached 3.2-million level. If we assume that more than half of the Turkish economy is still unregistered and the "unregistered" unemployment is taken into account as well, the situation is obviously even worst.
According to TÜİK data, in urban districts unemployment increased by 3.2 percentage points and reached 15.4 percent level, while in rural Turkey it increased by 2.6 percentage points and stands at 10.7 percent. The figures also showed that one in every four of our young population is unemployed. Needless to underline, we have a very young population and such a high rate of unemployment among the youth demonstrates a real risk for any government.
Mind you, up to here we were talking about the December 2008 unemployment figures. According to economists the situation of the Turkish economy deteriorated more over the past few months and hundreds of thousands of people, who have lost their jobs in January-February, are not yet reflected to official statistics.
That is, what Turkey is living through is a head-on-collision, not a tangentially passing crisis.
Most economists have condemned the latest measures of the government as "too little, too late" but still better than taking no measure at all or denying the impacts of the global crisis on the Turkish economy with some odd claims such as "Thank God, the crisis will past Turkey tangentially!"
The government has also started pumping optimism into the market saying that a new standby deal with the International Monetary Fund (which has been pending and being negotiated inconclusively since September last year, probably because of the upcoming March 29 local elections) will be concluded soon. When? Probably just few days before the elections so that the government could deny speculations that it withheld a deal with the IMF because such a new contract would not allow it engage in election economics and distribute alms in hopes of buying votes of the electorate. As they say in Turkish, the goat is concerned of its life, but the butcher is busy calculating how many kilos of meat he can make out of the goat.
Direful figures
Unfortunately because of allegations of political meddling, the Turkish Statistical Institution, or TÜİK, has lost all its prestige and the figures it releases have little credibility. Still, that is the only state agency engaged in statistics in the country and despite all our doubts regarding the accuracy of the figures it release, those figures are the available ones.
TÜİK released Monday its monthly unemployment statistics. The figures are so awful that even if they were "politically modified" they still reflect a desperate situation. Accordingly, the climb in the unemployment rate continued for the seventh consecutive month in December 2008 and reached an alarming 13.6 percent level. The unemployment rate in November 2008 was yet another record level of 12.3 percent, but the December figure demonstrated that the upward trend continued at a very terrifying rate that implied that the figure for January this year might be higher than 15 percent. Last year in December, the unemployment rate was at 10.6 percent and we were all accusing the government of failing to provide a remedy to the high unemployment rate. The figures showed that in December 2008 the "registered" unemployed figure increased by 838,000 compared to the corresponding period in 2007 and reached 3.2-million level. If we assume that more than half of the Turkish economy is still unregistered and the "unregistered" unemployment is taken into account as well, the situation is obviously even worst.
According to TÜİK data, in urban districts unemployment increased by 3.2 percentage points and reached 15.4 percent level, while in rural Turkey it increased by 2.6 percentage points and stands at 10.7 percent. The figures also showed that one in every four of our young population is unemployed. Needless to underline, we have a very young population and such a high rate of unemployment among the youth demonstrates a real risk for any government.
Mind you, up to here we were talking about the December 2008 unemployment figures. According to economists the situation of the Turkish economy deteriorated more over the past few months and hundreds of thousands of people, who have lost their jobs in January-February, are not yet reflected to official statistics.
That is, what Turkey is living through is a head-on-collision, not a tangentially passing crisis.
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