Financial crises

Türkiye's annual consumer price inflation rate quickened from 61.98 percent in November to 64.77 percent in December, the data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) showed on Jan. 3.

This was slightly below the Central Bank's revised forecast of 65 percent for the end of 2023.

Retail prices rose by 74.88 percent in December 2023 from a year ago in Istanbul, accelerating from the annual increase of 73.89 percent in the previous month, the data from the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (İTO).

The pace of month-on-month increase in retail prices slowed from 3.79 percent in November 2023 to 3.52 percent last month.

In 2023, the BIST100 index remained below the performance of 2022 and inflation, but there is a premium of about 35 percent. The policy based on high-interest rates, which changed with the new economic management after the elections, mobilized alternative markets. Interest rates, foreign exchange and gold protected investors relatively from inflation compared to the stock market.

The Central Bank has said that it will maintain its reserve build-up strategy and ensure continuation of the stable uptrend in international reserves in 2024.

The European Commission on Thursday announced a disbursement of payments to Greece and five other EU member-states.

According to a press release, the Commission made the third payment to Greece under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).

One of the key figures of the 2009-2018 Greek debt crisis, Germany's former finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, died on Tuesday. It is a development that appears almost symbolic in this country, as the deep wounds inflicted on its economy during that period, leading to a loss of a quarter of its output, have gradually started to heal.

The Greek state budget recorded a primary surplus of 5.826 billion euros in the January-November period this year, up from a budget target for a surplus of 3.771 billion and a primary deficit of 1.091 billion euros recorded in the same period last year.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, who helped negotiate German reunification in 1990 and as finance minister was a central figure in the austerity-heavy effort to drag Europe out of its debt crisis more than two decades later, has died. He was 81.

Schaeuble died at home on Tuesday evening, his family told German news agency dpa on Wednesday.

A significant reduction in the debt ratio, the strengthening of economic resilience, and improvement in Greece's governance indicators are the three essential steps required for the country to fully normalize and regain an A credit rating, as it had before the debt crisis, thus aligning with the average credit rating of eurozone economies. This analysis comes from the Bank of Greece.

Argentina's Economy Minister, Luis Caputo, declared an unprecedented step to devalue the peso by more than 50%, aiming to rescue the country's struggling economy. This decision, changing the dollar conversion rate to 800 pesos per dollar from 365, comes early in President Javier Milei's tenure.