Turkey to open 1,000 markets to counter high inflation - Erdogan

Turkey's president, Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said, Turkey had ordered agricultural cooperatives to open about 1,000 new markets across the country to provide “suitable” prices for consumer goods in the face of nearly 20 per cent annual inflation.

Construction would quickly begin on the shops to provide Turks “cheap and high quality goods” and to “balance out markets”, he said, after consumer price rises to levels well above a 5 per cent official target.

Frustrated by stubbornly double-digit inflation and sliding opinion polls, Erdogan’s ruling AK Party government has again opened probes into potential exploitative pricing.

“We gave the order for about 1,000 of these businesses to open around Turkey, starting at 500 square-meters each,” Erdogan told reporters after visiting an agricultural credit cooperative outlet in Istanbul.

“These are places where prices are suitable to our citizens’ budgets,” he said of the commercial outlets.

Annual food inflation of nearly 30 per cent, a global jump in commodity prices and the sharp depreciation of the lira currency have driven inflation higher throughout the year.

Inflation has remained in double digits for most of the past five years, eating into household earnings and setting Turkey well apart from emerging market peers.

In early 2019 – on the heels of a currency crisis that sent inflation soaring – the government opened its own markets to sell cheap vegetables and fruits directly, cutting out retailers it accused at the time of jacking up prices.