ISTANBUL: Annual inflation slowed in Turkey in January for the eighth consecutive month, official figures showed on Monday. Consumer prices rose by 42.1 per cent year-on-year, compared with 44.3 per cent a month earlier, figures from Turkey’s TUIK statistics institute said.

Turkey has experienced double-digit inflation since 2019, making life increasingly more expensive for millions of people, notably hitting the cost of education, housing, healthcare and restaurants and hotels.

The annual rate peaked at 75 per cent in May before starting to ease from June. On January 23, Turkey’s central bank lowered its key interest rate to 45 per cent from 50 per cent in December, saying its efforts to tame sky-high inflation were starting to pay off.

The monthly inflation accelerated to 5.0 per cent in January, compared to 1.0 percent the previous month, TUIK data showed. Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said the increase was due to “seasonal effects” and vowed inflation would keep on falling down, in a message on X.

William Jackson, chief emerging markets economist at London-based Capital Economics, said in a policy note that a jump in monthly inflation was “always likely” given the minimum wage hike hike around the turn of the year.

The net monthly minimum wage has been raised by 30 per cent to 22,104 lira ($600), beginning from January 1. The official inflation figures are disputed by the ENAG group of independent economists, which publishes its own monthly figures and gave a January year-on-year estimate of 81 per cent.