Minister Nebati responds to the Financial Times asking ‘Who is stuffing the turkey’

Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati responded to the news published by the British-based Financial Times (FT) newspaper about the informal money inflow to Turkey, in a witty language referring to the ‘Turkish economic model’ and using plenty of emojis on Twitter.

According to the Central Bank’s (MB) data, the current account deficit increased by 168 percent in the first seven months of 2022 compared to the same period last year and amounted to $ 36.67 billion. While the current account deficit in July exceeded expectations of $ 3.6 billion, despite this, the net increase of $ 4.42 billion in official reserves ‘aroused doubt’.

At a time when the current account deficit has reached the peak of the last year and a half, the increase in foreign exchange reserves attracts attention. According to the data of the MB, in the first six months of 2022, 24.347 billion dollars of uncertain source money entered Turkey. Of this, 5.473 billion dollars is the figure that entered in July alone. The data is based on the ‘net error and omission’ item, which shows money inflows and outflows of uncertain origin.

This item is generally due to measurement errors and incomplete or excessive compilation of the data in the table. As a procedure, the MB should equalize the account after a while, identify the source of currency inflow and transfer it to the relevant item, but this has not been practiced for a long time and economists consider this suspicious. A former chief economist of the Central Bank, also pointed out that two-thirds of the current account deficit in the first seven months had been funded by ‘net error and omission’.

The FT had written about this situation with ‘sarcastic’ language in its news entitled ‘Who fills Turkey’. Because the word Turkey also means the bird in English language, so the title could also be read as ’Who is stuffing the turkey, the bird”.

The Minister quoting the Twitter sharing of the news in question, wrote: “Turkey’s Economic Model: Investment, production, employment, exports, growth.”