President Erdoğan vows measures to bolster Turkey's economic program

Reuters

Turkey will take steps to strengthen its medium-term economic programme and the three main priorities are to increase public savings, prioritize investments and accelerate structural reforms, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said.

Speaking on April 16 evening after a cabinet meeting, Erdoğan said his economic team had made preparations for such steps to strengthen the program (MTP) and, "hopefully we will share them with the public very soon."

"We have three main priorities in strengthening the MTP. These are to increase public sector savings, prioritize investments, and accelerate structural reforms."

Speaking to reporters after the cabinet meeting, Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz said both the finance ministry and the budget authority were carrying out studies on public sector savings, with more than 15 articles being worked upon.

"We mean not only reducing expenditures, but making existing expenditures more efficient, prioritizing them, and making them contribute more to the economy's competitiveness, efficiency and social welfare," state broadcaster TRT reported him as saying.

Yılmaz also noted that Turkey would not hold any election for four years and this would allow them to focus on long term problems.

Erdoğan also said that economic growth will approach 4% this year with a positive impact from exports, and forecast that the current account deficit will be 2.5% of GDP at the end of the year.

Official data showed that Turkey's current account deficit stood at $3.265 billion in February, less than a Reuters forecast for a deficit of $3.7 billion.

Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan told a panel in Washington on April 16 that Turkey is on track to reach its 36% inflation target by the end of the year after peaking at around 75% in the coming months.