Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Turkey’s annual consumer price inflation unexpectedly accelerated last month as food and housing costs rose.

The inflation rate increased to 7.61 in March from 7.55 percent a month earlier, Turkey’s statistics bureau said in a statement on its website. Economists were expecting a decline to 7.2 percent, according to a Bloomberg survey. Prices rose 1.19 percent compared with the previous month, also missing the median estimate of 0.8 percent in a separate survey.

Food costs rose an annual 14.1 percent, compared with 13.7 percent the previous month, according to official data. Annual gains in the cost of housing rose to 8 percent from 7.5 in February.

Central bank Governor Erdem Basci said in January that he expected year-end CPI to be 5.5 percent, compared with the bank’s target of 5 percent. Price gains are still higher than the bank’s official target mainly due to food prices and a weakening lira, Basci said. Policy makers expect a fall in the inflation rate this year, underpinned by dropping commodity prices. Brent crude fell about 50 percent over the past year to just below $55 per barrel as of yesterday.

The lira weakened after the inflation report was released. The currency was trading 0.2 percent lower at 2.5900 per dollar at 10:10 a.m. in Istanbul.