PM Erdogan reminds reforms at conference

PM Erdogan reminds reforms at conference

For the past five-and-a-half years Turkey has been going through a fundamental transformation, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking yesterday at the 16th The Economist Roundtable Meeting in Istanbul.

“We have taken steps of historic importance in democracy. In economy, we have been implementing reforms no one dared to for the past 10 years,” he said at the meeting. As a result of these reforms, Turkey has become the world’s 17th and Europe’s sixth largest economy, he said.

The country’s annual exports rose from $36 billion to $121 billion since 2002, Erdoğan said. Inflation, on the other hand, dropped to single-digit figures from 30 percent since then, he added.

The prime minister also said Turkey does not need the International Monetary Fund as far as “monetary relations” are concerned. Replying to a question posed by Güler Sabancı, chairman of the board of directors at Sabancı Holding, Erdoğan reminded Turkey has $10 billion of debt to the IMF, a figure which stood at $23.5 billion less than six years ago. Still, he accepted the importance of the global body on “accreditation and negotiations.”

Commenting on the current account deficit, which is expected to reach $50 billion by the end of the year, the prime minister said the reason for the gap is the boom in energy prices. “Especially, the rapid rise in natural gas prices have been pressuring electricity prices. As we saw this is unavoidable, we increased the price of electricity and also believed in the necessity to implement an automatic pricing mechanism,” he said.