ANKARA
Turkish Prime Minister and Chairman of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan assessed Turkey's economic developments at the Turkish parliament on Tuesday.
During his speech at his party's parliamentary group meeting, Erdogan reminded that in 2012, the inflation rate was 6.2 percent which was the lowest inflation rate achieved in Turkey since 1968.
Erdogan said that in the past decade his party achieved successful results and added that at the end of 2002, the inflation rate was about 30 percent.
After a long while, in 2004, the inflation rate was dropped to single digits and in 2012, Turkey hit a new record of 6.2 percent of inflation rate.
Erdodan stressed that in 2002, main index of Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) was 11,000 in average yet in 2012, the index reached an average of 64,000.
He drew attention to the automotive sales and said that in 2012, the number of car sales annually was 556,000. In 2002, this was 91,000.
He also reminded of another record and said, "When we came to office, the foreign exchange reserves of Turkish Central Bank was $27.5 billion and now it reached to $122 billion 146 million."
Erdogan said, "We owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) $23.5 billion and we took over the management with these figures. Now, it is under $1 billion. Hopefully, with two payments until May, we will write off. As a result of talks, we lend IMF $5 billion. These are the figures of 2013's first days. Hopefully, we will continue achieving successful results in 2013 as we did in 2012."
Erdogan also mentioned newly added projects and said that they will spare 46 billion Turkish Liras (TL) for 2,737 new projects of 2013.
He said that they increased the annual allowance for projects by 20 percent compared to previous year and explained that the 14 billion TL of the 46 billion TL allowance would be spent for transportation, the 8 billion TL for education, 6 billion TL for agriculture and the 3 billion TL for health services.
On Marmaray project and suburban lines, Erdogan said that for the year of 2013 they spared 9.3 billion TL allowance and said, "Hopefully we will complete it by September 30 and open for the service. We also spared 8.2 billion TL for the high-speed rail line between Ankara and Istanbul and also planning to complete this project on September 30 aswel."
Lastly, Erdogan expressed that in 2001, the average completion time for projects were 9 years, yet now it has dropped to 3 and a half years.
