Price stability needs structural policies: Turkish Central Bank head

Turkey needs a more comprehensive approach to price stability in the light of experience gained in the last 10 years, the country's Central Bank governor said March 25.      

Speaking at the closing session of the Uludağ Economy Summit in the northwestern province of Bursa, Murat Çetinkaya said the Central Bank is attaching higher importance to structural policies, while there is a global concern about sustainability.      

Çetinkaya stated that many of the problems that had been encountered by developed countries have not been observed in Turkey during the post-global financial crisis period.      

"For instance, the accessibility problems to financial tools due to the high levels of financial leverages were not experienced in our country. Also, Turkey does not have any efficiency problem related with aging population. But there are some fields that we can develop ourselves, like price stability," he said.       

Pointing out to the required comprehensive approach, Çetinkaya said it has three important components.      

"First of all, we should diagnose the factors of the inflation other than monetary policies, and we should increase social awareness about this issue," he said.       

"Establishing a platform to share the ideas of all related institutions comes in the second place. As a third component, we have to follow a decisive monetary policy that should be built with a strong communication," he added.       

Efforts to maintain price stability

Çetinkaya stressed the importance of price stability, which has a multidimensional interaction with a lot of problems. "Deepening of the financial markets, a more efficient and balanced distribution of finance and dollarization...