Two Hundred
While high inflation is eroding purchasing power, citizens’ access to basic food products is becoming more difficult. When you go to the market with 200 TL, the largest banknote in circulation, it is not possible to buy products like meat, milk and vegetables together. Europeans coming to Turkey, on the other hand, can buy products that can fill a few supermarket trolleys when they exchange 200 euros. This image, which arose with the depreciation of the TL, also reveals the sad state of Turkey.
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Yesterday, 1 euro reached the level of 20.35 TL. With the depreciation of the Turkish lira, our country became a shopping paradise for foreigners. When a European exchanges 200 euros, he can buy 17.7 kilograms of the 230 TL cubed per kilogram. Our citizens, on the other hand, can only buy 850 grams of meat with 200 TL, which they barely earn. Similarly, a Turkish citizen can hardly buy 33 loaves of bread for 6 TL each with 200 TL. The situation is even worse for eggs, another staple food. A box of 30 eggs is sold for 65 TL and the citizen can buy only 3 boxes of eggs with 200 TL. Europeans can put 63 boxes of eggs in their basket in Turkey.
The Turkish lira not only depreciated against the dollar. With the appreciation of the currencies of our neighbors, the Bulgarian lev and the Georgian lari against the TL in recent years, tens of thousands of people from these two countries have come to Turkey just for shopping. Bulgarians and Georgians who come to Turkey with their vehicles from the border gates for a day, fill their luggage with all kinds of goods and return to their countries.
Most of the revenue goes to food.
According to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), food inflation was 77.87 percent in 2022. It is claimed that there is a much higher inflation rate in food, which is the highest spending item for low-income citizens, compared to TUIK data. The hunger limit for a family of 4, calculated by the United Public-Business Research Center (KAMU-AR), increased to 9,059 TL in December 2022.
TL 3rd in the league of the most losers
The depreciation of the Turkish lira together with the high inflation experienced in the last year caused the purchasing power of citizens to further deteriorate. The Turkish lira was one of the currencies that lost the most value against the dollar in 2022. TL found its place in third place in the world league with a depreciation of 34.98 percent. Among the currencies that lost the most value, the Argentine peso ranked first with 69.14 percent, followed by the Egyptian lira with 56.91 percent. After Turkey, the Pakistani rupee ranked fourth with a depreciation of 26.89 percent, followed by the Bangladeshi taka with 21.04 percent. In 2022, the Colombian peso depreciated 20.65%, the South Korean won 20%, and the Japanese yen 18.41% against the US dollar.