ANKARA - Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, who also acts as the group chairman of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), said on Tuesday, ''if we will make self-sacrifices to solve problems of our country, a discrimination cannot be in question. We cannot tell only a part of the society to make self-sacrifices.''
Speaking at the group meeting of the AK Party, Prime Minister Gul noted, ''Turkish economy has been suffering some serious difficulties in the last 4-5 years. During this period, Turkey has shrunken. As a result, people made their preference in the general elections on November 3, and brought the AK Party to the political power on its own. Ministers have begun working day and night as soon as the government has come into power. We are working seriously. We are courageous and determined as a political party which came into power on its own.''
Gul said, ''our first target is to reduce inflation to a single-digit figure. Our target is to save Turkey from big debt burden and from public debt burden. When we are doing all these, we aim to ensure a stable economic growth. Clear indicators of rehabilitation will be observed soon.''
The inflation rate was below 50 percent although it was around 70 percent when they took over the government, Gul noted.
Gul said that all those developments were resulting from confidence in the program of the government.
They had confidence in themselves and internal and external markets had confidence in their government, Gul stated.
Gul said that he would not be reluctant to say that macro economic indicators would be better in coming days.
When inflation rate was being reduced, economic growth would be ensured at the same time, Gul pointed out.
Gul said, ''we will find necessary source for our expenditures. We have seen that expenditures without any calculations have cost high inflation rates and injustice in distribution of income in Turkey. To this end, we will fulfil expenditure reform determinedly.''
''You see steps taken on the issue. We started to decrease unfair expenditures in public sector. We have to make sacrifices,'' Gul said.
Stating that the government was getting prepared for a temporary budget, Gul said, ''when we are preparing budget, we give priority to point that we want to relieve people who suffer from poor living conditions and who are under poverty line. We arrange our priorities according to that. You will see decisions on the issue to be announced in coming days.''
Gul said that if we would make self-sacrifices to solve problems of our country, a discrimination could not be in question and added that they would prepare 3-month and annual budget with this consciousness.