Finally realising that it’s useless to put pressure on banks to push their depositors to close their KKM accounts and return to regular deposits, the Central Bank decided to take some responsibility and it took interest rates to significantly high levels, leaving the banks to decide whether or not they should do the same increase.

The banking history in Turkey is older than its industrial history. The banking and finance have always been a tradition in these lands. Bankers do not act like a regular business people. They tend to be unforthcoming and nonchalant. They use their enthusiasm only to develop business.

The bankers and the large depositors I spoke to yesterday morning seemed quite calm to me. The former told me that they would wait until the exact policy is released, while depositors were certain that the policy would change at least a couple of times before it takes its final shape.

When the FXD burden was lifted, the CBRT decided to initiate a brand-new operation over the weekend in order to stop printing money all the time. So, this new operation necessitates that provisions, related obligations and liabilities for the FXD deposits, foreign currency and foreign currency-like instruments will increase in banks, because depositors are expected convert their FXD deposits to regular TRY deposits since the Central Bank will set its policy rate to a maximum of 20% and leave the rate hike job to the banks.

Migration statistics have become an important data that we all have to know about. Yesterday, TurkStat released its 2022 migration data, according to which, the percentage of people migrating from one province to another was 3.18% from 2007 to 2008. In 2022, this rate increased to 3.27%. Last year, 2.8 million people moved to other cities in Turkey, 47.9% of them being men and 52.1% women.

The middle of the trading week and negative developments continue to affect the world economy. The troubled real estate companies in China, the continuing doubts about the US banks, the credit crunch and the higher-than-expected inflation have been among the major events of this month in international affairs.

People kept asking me the following question during my travels in Anatolia: "Why are we like this?". When I was younger, I used to take this question quite seriously and try to address it with a sensible answer. Today, I am trying to explain people that “One cannot choose its place of birth. Where you are born seals your destiny forever”.

For thousands of years, philosophers and economists have been trying to determine what a "fair price" should be. In this pursuit, "labour cost" or "labour hour" had been the most important parameter to some, to others, it was “scarcity”. Sometimes rulers tried to set the price of goods and services. None of them succeeded in ascertaining the exact fair price. In the end, everyone agreed, albeit unwillingly, that the value upon which the buyer and seller shook hands should be the fair price, in a market that is free of intervention of outside authorities.

As another week comes to an end, the government has revealed some of its action plans for the year ahead: - The new economic plan will be released in September. - Restrictions on loan approvals will be lifted after the announcement of the plan. . .

The Central Bank’s efforts to ensure that the Dollar/TRY rate does not surpass 27 has lately been one of most discussed issues on social media.

Following the conclusion of the elections this June, foreign exchange reserves of Turkish Central Bank have been increasing, albeit rather slowly, as stated by Minister Şimşek. However, the recently released data revealed that in the week of 28 July, the net assets of the Central Bank fell to a negative 50 billion dollars again.

July’s high inflation rate reminded me of an article I published in April, before the elections. Today, the conditions remain unchanged while the country is heading towards another election.

I have recently attended a meeting as a guest speaker, where I also had the chance to read the efficiency report jointly prepared by Enerjisa and IDEMA. Below you will find my interpretive summary of this report, containing some quite valuable findings.

The Federal Reserve and the ECB continued to increase rates, stressing that inflation is still a major threat. Last week, we watched the CBRT Chair speak to the press, also emphasising the same point.

Once upon a time, in summer, factories would temporarily stop production, movement in big cities would slow down, monthly inflation rate would be very low or even drop to negative figures, then demand would revive again as autumn begins. This pattern remained intact in the late 1980s, and the early 1990s, when I started my first job.