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Corporate Turkey is finally feeling the pinch of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s radical departure from years of unconventional economic policies. Not everyone is happy with the new normal.
土耳其企业终于感受到了总统雷杰普•塔伊普•埃尔多安(Recep Tayyip Erdoğan)彻底背离多年来的非常规经济政策所带来的压力。并非所有人都对新常态感到满意。
Erdoğan, who once called high interest rates the “mother and father of all evil”, made the kind of volte-face after his re-election in May 2023 that seemed almost unimaginable to many Turkey watchers. He started by tapping Mehmet Şimşek, a highly-regarded former deputy prime minister and City of London bond strategist, as finance minister.
埃尔多安曾称高利率为“万恶之母和万恶之父”，但在2023年5月连任后，他的态度发生了大转变，这在许多土耳其观察人士看来几乎是不可想象的。他首先任命备受尊敬的前副总理、伦敦金融城(City of London)前债券策略师穆罕默德•希姆谢克为财政部长。
Şimşek inherited a $1tn economy on the brink. Years of ultra-low interest rates fuelled runaway inflation, while a burst of pre-election stimulus — including a month of free gas for households and minimum wage rises — ignited furious demand for imports. Economists were concerned that Turkey was very close to a balance of payments crisis before Şimşek was appointed in June 2023.
希姆谢克接手的是一个濒临崩溃的1万亿美元经济体。多年的超低利率助长了失控的通货膨胀，而大选前的一阵刺激政策——包括为家庭提供一个月的免费天然气和提高最低工资——引发了对进口商品的强烈需求。经济学家担心，在希姆谢克于2023年6月被任命之前，土耳其已经非常接近国际收支危机。
Şimşek wasted little time in vowing to reinstate “rational” economic policymaking and reshuffling the management of Turkey’s central bank. Erdoğan went so far as publicly vowing that “tight monetary policy” would be the tool for fighting inflation, an extraordinary reversal from his years-long insistence that low rates cure rather than cause rapid price growth.
希姆谢克没有浪费多少时间，就发誓要恢复“理性”的经济决策，并对土耳其中央银行的管理层进行了改组。埃尔多安甚至公开誓言，“紧缩货币政策”将是对抗通货膨胀的工具，这与他多年来坚持的低利率能治愈而非导致物价快速增长的观点大相径庭。
The central bank, which is now run by former US Federal Reserve economist Fatih Karahan, has lifted its main interest rate from 8.5 per cent last June to 50 per cent in March. The mechanism for the transmission of monetary policy to the economy that was severed by the previous unorthodox measures appears now to be more functional, meaning once-easy financial conditions are tightening.
目前由美联储前经济学家法提赫•卡拉汉(Fatih Karahan)执掌的土耳其央行，已将主要利率从去年6月的8.5%上调至今年3月的50%。此前被非常规措施切断的货币政策向经济传导的机制，现在似乎更有效了，这意味着曾经宽松的金融环境正在收紧。
“The business world has transitioned from a period of abundant cash with low interest rates but limited access to credit to a period of scarce cash and high loan interest rates, with even more limited access to credit,” said Süleyman Sönmez, president of the Turkish Business Confederation.
土耳其商业联合会(Turkish business Confederation)主席Süleyman Sönmez表示：“商界已经从一个现金充裕、利率低但信贷渠道有限的时期，过渡到一个现金匮乏、贷款利率高、信贷渠道更有限的时期。”
Consumer demand has remained robust, helped by the lingering effects of last year’s pre-election giveaways and because household debt levels remain low compared with other emerging markets. Such demand was one reason why many businesses were surprisingly sanguine about the inflation rate, which peaked above 85 per cent in late 2022 before cooling to 72 per cent last month. Exporters also were boosted by a 33 per cent decline in the real exchange rate, a measure of the competitiveness of Turkish goods, from the start of 2018 and May 2023.
消费者需求依然强劲，这得益于去年大选前政府赠款的持续影响，也因为与其它新兴市场相比，家庭债务水平仍然较低。这种需求是许多企业对土耳其通胀率出奇乐观的原因之一。土耳其通胀率在2022年末达到85%以上的峰值，上月降至72%。从2018年初到2023年5月，衡量土耳其商品竞争力的实际汇率下跌33%，也提振了出口商。
Still, once red-hot growth in consumption is cooling, and economists expect a further slowdown after policymakers refrained from a mid-year minimum wage rise. Şimşek is trying to engineer a soft landing: economists polled by FactSet expect inflation-adjusted output to grow 3 per cent this year, compared with an average rate of 5.2 per cent in the decade to 2023. This modest deceleration still represents a seismic shift for some companies.
然而，一度火热的消费增长正在降温，经济学家预计，在政策制定者没有在年中提高最低工资后，经济增长将进一步放缓。 希姆谢克正试图实现软着陆：FactSet调查的经济学家预计，今年经通胀调整后的产出将增长3%，而在2023年之前的十年平均增长率为5.2%。对于一些公司来说，这种温和的减速仍然代表着巨大的转变。
Businesses have broadly backed Şimşek: “We recognise that the slowdown in growth is an integral part of the disinflation process,” said Sönmez. But behind the scenes, there is a growing sense of discontent in some corners of the business community. One former top economic official notes that more than a year into the policy shift, inflation is still far from stable and many companies are stuck in a “wait-and-see mode”, making it difficult to make long-term decisions.
企业普遍支持希姆谢克：“我们认识到增长放缓是反通胀过程的一部分，”Sönmez说。但在幕后，商界的某些角落出现了越来越多的不满情绪。一位前高级经济官员指出，政策转变已经过去一年多，通胀仍然远未稳定，许多公司陷入了“观望模式”，这使得做出长期决策变得困难。
The ex-official said that there was also a feeling in the business community that Şimşek’s messaging had been too heavily focused on wooing international investors, who are now wading back into the Turkish lira and the domestic debt market that they had shunned for years. He added that many businesses had expected conditions to have started easing as soon as this summer and are beginning to run out of patience.
这位前官员说，商界还有一种感觉，即希姆谢克发出的信息过于注重招揽国际投资者，而这些投资者现在又开始涉足他们多年来避之不及的土耳其里拉和国内债务市场。他补充说，许多企业原本预计今年夏天经济形势就会开始缓和，现在开始失去耐心。
Exporters have also grown increasingly frustrated at the 20 per cent rise in the real effective exchange rate over the past year. “Turkey is at least 40 per cent more expensive than its competitors in terms of dollar-based pricing. As a result, Turkey is losing its competitiveness,” said Mustafa Gültepe, head of the Turkish Exporters Assembly, at a recent press conference. Lenders are also bracing themselves for a potential rise in non-performing retail loans as conditions tighten, according to one senior Turkish banker.
过去一年，土耳其里拉实际有效汇率上升了20%，出口商也越来越感到沮丧。“以美元计价，土耳其的价格至少比竞争对手高出40%。因此，土耳其正在失去竞争力，”土耳其出口商大会主席Mustafa Gültepe在最近的一次新闻发布会上表示。土耳其一位资深银行家表示，随着形势收紧，各银行还在为不良零售贷款可能上升做准备。
Karahan has made a repeated vow to do “whatever it takes” to fight inflation. If price rises do not start to slow, businesses might need to prepare for a prolonged period of tight policy that eventually damps demand.
卡拉汉曾多次誓言要“不惜一切代价”抗击通胀。如果价格上涨没有开始放缓，企业可能需要为长期的紧缩政策做好准备，这最终会抑制需求。