UPDATE - Turkey: Annual inflation eases for 2nd month in October

UPDATES WITH QUOTES FROM HALKINVEST ECONOMIST

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s annual consumer price inflation rate went down in October, according to a report issued by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) on Monday.

This is the second month in a row that the rate has gone down. Yearly inflation was 7.16 percent in October compared to 7.28 percent last September and 7.58 percent in October 2015, the report said.

Monthly inflation was 1.44 percent in October over the previous month, easily beating forecasts of 1.62 percent.

The median estimate of the inflation expectation survey -- prepared by Anadolu Agency’s Finance Desk -- was 1.62 percent on a monthly basis and 7.35 percent on an annual basis.

However, HalkInvest Chief Economist Banu Kivci Tokali said the downward trend might change in the remaining two months of the year.

"We saw an upside movement which we had forecasted in food prices, especially in unprocessed foods. And also [we] feel the after effects of depreciation of Turkish lira in auto and household goods," Tokali said.

About the next two months, he said: “We expect annual inflation to tick upside and we [expect to] preserve our 7.9 percent year-end forecast. The decline in core inflation figure is also positive but we see it to stick to [an] increasing trend in coming months," she added.

The report showed the highest monthly increase was in clothing and footwear with 10.43 percent, while the top sub-indices of yearly consumer price inflation on an annual basis were alcoholic beverages and tobacco, which rose by 22.61 percent.