Financial crises

Christos Staikouras was named Finance Minister of the Year 2023 for Europe by The Banker magazine of the Financial Times group, whose awards celebrate the officials that have best managed to stimulate growth and stabilize their economy.

Türkiye's annual inflation slowed sharply from 84.4 percent in November 2022 to 64.3 percent in December after peaking to 85.5 percent in October last year, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) have shown.

The monthly increase in consumer prices also eased from 2.88 percent in November to 1.18 percent.

The property boom is coming to an end, according to a study by Swiss bank UBS, with Frankfurt and Toronto topping the list of imbalanced markets.

The bank's annual study of the world property market looked at prices in 25 major cities across the globe.

South Korea's central bank yesterday hiked its key interest rate by half a percentage point to a decade high as it tries to tackle surging inflation and support the plunging won.

Fitch maintained Greece's credit rating two notches below investment grade, maintaining the positive outlook.

As Fitch explains in the report justifying its decision, the high debt and non-performing loans offset the positive elements that would justify an upgrade.

The private sector's total outstanding loans received from abroad declined by $7 billion from the end of 2021 to stand at $162 billion as of July, the Central Bank data have shown.

Long-term loans fell by $7.1 billion over the same period to decline to $154.5 billion, whereas the private companies' short-term loans -excluding trade credits - rose by $85mn to $7.6 billion.

Consumer prices in Türkiye increased by 1.46 percent in August from the previous month, easing from the monthly increases of 2.37 percent in July and 4.95 percent in June, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) have shown.

Consequently, the annual inflation rate advanced from 79.6 percent in July to 80.2 percent last month.

Goldman Sachs has revised upwards its growth forecast for the Turkish economy for 2022 after official data showed earlier this week that the economy expanded 7.6 percent in the second quarter.

The investment bank raised its forecast from a previous 3.5 percent to 5.5 percent.

French annual inflation eased in August from a three-decade high, the first slowdown in over a year, official data showed yesterday.    

Consumer prices hit 5.8 percent in August compared to 6.1 percent in July, which was the highest level since 1985, according to statistics institute INSEE.    

In July, a new absolute record of inflation was recorded in the Eurozone - 8.9% on an annual basis compared to 8.6% in June. This is stated in the published report of the European statistical agency Eurostat. Annual inflation in the Eurozone increased 3.5 times from 2.16% last year for July.

As noted by the agency, monthly inflation rose by 0.1% in July, after a rise of 0.8% in June.