The same stupidity that eroded Turkey's economy in the 90's is being repeated. All hail stupidity!
Short explanation. No reform of any kind, no budget discipline. uncontrolled spending and no accountability. Using FX reserve to absolut no lasting effect but daily foolishness.
The swaps are not our money, but money in hand to fool Turkish public. Result horrible domestic economy that RTE will try to fix by lowering interest rate again. Worsening the economy and people not being able to afford anything.
I am not well read on the 90s for Turkey economy (I just know both its politics and economy was in lot of turbulence then).....but I doubt it (any TR govt) could at that point afford to do what its doing now:
Negative net reserves of -40 billion (and using currency swap of about 120 billion so far to get to around 80 billion level gross to play with).
I am pretty sure it was unthinkable situation to even have in the 1990s which was still operating in norms of cold war overall conservative "harder backing money" system one can say (Greenspan and others started to change this significantly which is long subject to get into).
This has become kind of an easier habit to get into since 2000s and post 2008 (recession) especially compared to 90s....for a number of reasons (mostly the larger levers in world economy operating norms after 08 and enough greenspan-onomics in operation).
It has been troubling for many developing countries (especially as PRC inserts itself into the lending edifice as well).....Turkey is somewhat in a "Sweetspot" for the trouble to be extra hard given it has achieved some quite visible development (along with its proximity to EU) and can leverage on that more than say a regular poorer developing (and especially smaller population) country.
Government will have to step in and sell food cheaper, undercutting the market.
I think that is going to be really tough. They have used up fiscal routes in the vicious cycle they got in since 2018 especially.
That was all part of not addressing the banking debt + lending issues (rather covering them up). When you come to call chips there, you get the IOUs you yourself put there to cover/cycle it up....all in the goal of borrowing/leveraging more (for real estate stuff mostly it seems) and act like nothing is the problem.
Several TR economists were calling this out early (and of course were ignored or tarred).
It is now a big ripe problem given the precariousness now where you need that stuff to be solid (to dip into) rather than hollow like ponzi scheme.
This further drives the currency-swap reliance for forex....since loan route (by bonds etc) is dried up and citizens+companies are abandoning lira use as well.
I think Turkey is just stuck with real nasty inflation and damage done for quite some time (even if AKP admin is replaced in 2023).
It will take some years for competent economists and managers to undo the problems in the relevant succession.
Communism Communism Communism!
Well communism is different. Certain things were decided and commited to long term.
The direction of car was headed wrong way (in long term, with grievous consequences decades later when the cliff finally showed and inertia was too big to turn back for some)....
....but there was no shakiness about what gas and brake were in that system like TR govt (or at least its apologists) has or cannot logically explain.
All to defend this kooky self-destructive "theory" (with no sound data/history to show for it) of lower interest rate = low inflation.
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Which food? The production has been cut down remarkably and there even might be a scarcity of meat in 2022.
The current government (AKP) has appointed at "importing" food whenever the supplies was not sufficient from domestic sources, moreover they have also imported food and meat to reduce to prices in domestic market. They have killed the agriculture by intention.
TARBIL project in a nutshell;
Commenced by one time earlier agriculture and foresty ministry an institution located in an university was under construction. In fact Tarbil project was a lot more than a building where experts and scientists came together, collecting data from field directly with fixed stations distributed around Turkey (was like 1000 or over stations), satellite subscription as acquired from Airbus to get imagery by intervals to asses what to plan at which location and estimate the yields annually and observe the health of the plants.
If i am correctly they have also opened positions for 1000 or more personnel to be deployed at field, experts of their field or some basic workers to take samples.
What happened to project? Just like windows copying files, it got stuck at 99% because the minister has changed, the one appointed most recently by Erdogan has halted all of the projects from the predecessor and continued neither of them after a year or two.
This is technically can be referred as "Vatana ihanet". For throwing such a critical project important in the self-sufficiency and foods security was thrown to trash intentionally, equipment left in store to rot away, building remains unfinished. People recruited in positions spend their days without doing anything.
I am not surprised. Follow through needs competence and some core logic.
Throw and see what sticks is brochure-oriented approach....and they tend to be uncompleted or done in shallow way once the propaganda utility has been used by the politicians involved. Especially if something about them is tough/long-term/structural etc.
If govt gets wedded to too much real estate brochure/white elephant approach for the needs of the larger economy (in chunk of 10, 20 years etc).....it can easily spread to both endorsement of kooky theories and also lack of competence in follow through on seemingly public-interest (public and/or merit goods) endeavours.