By Gokhan Kurtaran
LONDON
Turkey is expected to significantly boost its growth and reduce its current account deficit and inflation in coming days thanks to a slump in oil prices, an economist of the World Bank said Wednesday.
In an exclusive interview, Franziska Ohnsorge, who is one of the authors of World Bank's latest Global Economic Prospects report, said that the Turkish economy was forecasted to grow by 3.5 percent in 2015, 3.7 percent in 2016 and 3.9 percent in 2017.
“Turkey is one of the countries that we expect to benefit from the oil price decline. We expect current accounts to improve,” Ohnsorge said.
“We also expect some disinflation, just a pass through into inflation that should help authorities to help the central bank bring down the inflation and implement the monetary policy. For growth, we expect some pick up from 3.1 to 3.5 and 3.7,” she said.
The senior economist said that there was confidence in Turkish economy to gain strength in the coming term and a resilient domestic demand to contribute to overall growth performance.
“Turkey is one of the countries, which every now and then, we have a surprise on the upside; we had a very strong growth forecast for Turkey with 3.1 percent and now we expect this to carry on with 3.5 percent,” she added.
Regarding the effects of a possible interest rate hike from the U.S. Federal Reserve, he said that interest rates raises would be very gradual and capital flow to Turkey was expected to be moderate in 2015.
“We expect capital flows (to Turkey) to be quite resilient. It’s one of the countries which has a solid fiscal position, which should benefit from the lower oil prices and current account would eventually improve,” she noted.
