ANKARA - A Turkish state minister expressed his thought that an economic program between Turkey and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should aim at increasing Turkey`s competitive power.
Turkey`s State Minister Mehmet Simsek said that Turkey and the fund should agree on a program to increase Turkey`s competitive power.
"I believe it will be beneficial if we agree on a program aiming to increase Turkey`s competitive power," Simsek said during a program on the state-run TRT-1 channel.
Simsek said that Turkey and the IMF continued their technical dialogue, and post-program monitoring and precautionary stand-by arrangement were the options that were on the table right now.
"If we cannot make a program aiming to increase our competitive power, we can go on with post-program monitoring," he also said.
Simsek said that Turkey should go on its path without making concessions of reducing inflation figure to single-digit figure and ensuring price stability.
"What we should do is to keep the financial policy firm, rehabilitate competitive power with micro-reforms, lift obstacles before competition and enter a process that will ensure a permanent fall in the inflation figure," Simsek said.
Simsek said that the world was undergoing a problematic time and Turkey was also affected by it.
The minister said that Turkey`s growth rate slowed down in the second quarter of 2008, and defined the 1.9 percent growth figure in this period as the lowest growth rate since 2002.
Simsek said Turkey grew 4 percent in the first half of the year, and defined it as a reasonable figure.
The minister said that growth figures were affected by internal and external developments, and it was not a surprise for him as he had been saying that the growth would slow down as of the second quarter of this year.
(BRC-MS)
(ECO)