Inflation in Türkiye will decrease significantly in the second half of the year, the country's minister of treasury and finance said on Friday.

During his speech at the opening of the Türkiye-Saudi Arabia Investment and Business Forum, Mehmet Simsek praised his country's efforts to tackle high inflation and steps taken to boost the economy.

"We believe that we have the right program to get here. By 2028, we will achieve price stability, the journey has begun," Simsek said.

"We are restoring financial health, repairing the damage caused by the major earthquake, reducing deficiencies, and more importantly, we will implement structural reforms to sustain these gains. We will not do anything extraordinary, conventional monetary policies will be implemented, and tightening monetary policies will work."

He also set a target of 30% inflation for the end of 2024, and around 14% for the next year.

"We aim for it to fall to single digits. This is a prediction compatible with global experience," he said.

Role of structural reforms

Pointing out that all the progress in Türkiye is seen by the credit rating agencies and they reflect this in their ratings, Simsek said, "current account deficit has already started to decline, we think we are on the right track. The current account deficit will fall below 30 billion dollars in the first half of this year."

"We see a temporary slowdown, but these structural reforms are one of the key areas to rebuild growth and ensure sustainable high growth in the medium term," he said.

"If you want to build a competitive economy, if you want to create a productive economy, and if you want to improve long-term growth potential, structural transformation is the only way to do this."

Türkiye's huge potential

In his presentation, Minister Simsek also informed the participating business people about other advantages that Türkiye offers in terms of investing.

Pointing out that Türkiye has a huge potential in green areas and green products, Simsek noted that they can work together with Saudi Arabia in this field.

In his presentation, Simsek touched upon the investments made in infrastructure and superstructure, targeted works, and Türkiye's perspective in the fields of artificial intelligence and digitalisation, and said, "We are investing in renewable energy. We will invest at least 100 billion dollars for 12 years."