Inflation

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has vowed to fight inflation and to establish a finance management team with global reputation.

"Eliminating the problems caused by the rise of prices and compensate for welfare losses are the most urgent issues in the days ahead," Erdoğan said in a speech he delivered in Ankara after winning the second round of the presidential election.

As widely expected, Türkiye's Central Bank has once again kept its policy rate - one-week repo auction rate- constant at 8.5 percent. 

Salary increases - and indeed more than usual - are being requested or expected to be requested by employees at 81% of businesses in Greece, in order to recover the purchasing power they lost in previous years, but also during the last two years, due to inflation.

The Federal Reserve will make only modest progress in its fight against inflation for the rest of this year, even while keeping its benchmark interest rate at a 16-year high, a group of business economists predict in a survey released Monday.

Almost eight out of 10 borrowers (78%) who purchased a home with a loan in 2022 chose a fixed interest rate of at least five years.

The percentage among those who chose a long-term interest rate - i.e. more than 10 years - was also high, at 63%, opting for the long-term commitment to the uncertainty created by the persistence of inflation.

The Central Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will meet for the fifth time this year on May 25 to decide about the key interest rate.

Analysts expect the monetary authority to keep its policy rate - one-week repo auction rate - unchanged at 8.5 percent as it did last month.

Japan's consumer prices rose 3.4 percent on-year in April, in line with market expectations, government data showed on May 19.    

The figure, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, followed a 3.1 percent rise recorded in both March and February.    

The soaring retail prices of milk have led to a further decline in the consumption of the commodity this year, by 5.3% in sales volume terms in the year to April, following the drop registered for the first time in 2022.

Inflation has forced consumers to cut down even on basic food items, also switching away from branded products toward supermarkets' private label offerings.

The end-year inflation expectations in the Central Bank's latest survey of market participants eased from 37.77 in April to 37.17 percent in May.

The annual consumer price inflation further slowed to 43.68 percent in April from 50.5 percent in the previous month, with the CPI advancing 2.39 percent monthly.

BELGRADE - National Bank of Serbia (NBS) Vice Governor Zeljko Jovic said on Wednesday Serbia had registered a FDI inflow of 1.259 bln euros in the first four months of this year, or 66 pct more y-o-y.