January 28 (SeeNews) - Turkey's central bank said on Thursday that the country's inflation is projected to be 9.4% at the end of 2021, thus maintaining its October forecast.
"Based on the revisions in the assumptions for Turkish lira-denominated import prices and oil and food prices accompanied by the effects of the tight monetary policy stance to be maintained until there are strong indicators that point to a permanent fall in inflation and price stability, inflation forecasts have been kept unchanged," the central bank said in its latest inflation report.
Turkey's inflation is projected to fall to 7% at the end of 2022 before stabilising at around 5% in 2023, which is the medium-term target, the financial institution also said.
With a 70% probability, inflation is expected to be between 7.3% and 11.5% at end-2021 and between 4.6% and 9.4% at end-2022, it added.
"The decisive implementation of the tight monetary policy in line with the 5% medium-term inflation target will cause the inflation expectations to become compatible with the target, exchange rate pass through to decline to reasonable levels and inflation rigidity to go down," the central bank also said.
Earlier this month, the central bank decided to hold its one-week repo rate at 17%.
Turkey's consumer price index (CPI) rose by 14.6% year-on-year in December, after rising by an annual 14.03% the month before, the country's statistical office said earlier this month.