Turkish inflation slows to 52%

ISTANBUL: Turkey’s annual inflation rate slowed further in August to 52 percent after reaching 61.8 percent in July, official data showed on Tuesday. The central bank began to raise interest rates last year in an effort to battle soaring prices, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dropped his opposition to orthodox monetary policy. Turkey’s annual inflation rate reached a decades-long high of 85 percent in October 2022. It fell to 38.2 percent in June 2023 before rising again. It reached 75 percent in May this year but started to fall in June. The biggest price rises in August were in education, at 120.8 percent, housing at 101.5 percent, and hotels and restaurants at 67.7 percent, according to the Turkish statistics institute. On a month-to-month comparison, consumer prices rose 2.5 percent in August. — AFP

MasOrange to cut 800 jobs

MADRID: Spanish telecoms firm MasOrange plans to cut around 800 jobs, or around 10 percent of its workforce, in Spain, a union and the firm said on Tuesday, the latest in a string of layoffs in the sector in the country. The company, which was born in March from the merger of French telecoms giant Orange’s unit in Spain and Spanish rival MasMovil, is the country’s second-largest telecoms firm after former state monopoly Telefonica. The job cuts plan was presented by the firm on Tuesday and it “aims to cut a maximum of 795 jobs in six of the nine companies that make up the group, the UGT union said in a statement. MasOrange and unions will start negotiating the layoffs on September 17, the union added. — AFP

Brazil economy outperforms in Q2

BRASILIA: Brazil’s economy surprised to the upside in the second quarter as the strength of its services and industry sectors offset the impacts of deadly floods in a southern state, bolstering expectations for a solid full-year performance. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 1.4 percent in the three months through June 30 on a sequential basis, accelerating from the revised 1.0 percent growth recorded in the first quarter, statistics agency IBGE said on Tuesday. The quarter-on-quarter performance was above the 0.9 percent increase expected in a Reuters poll of economists. – Reuters

Escriva new Bank of Spain chief

MADRID: The Spanish government will appoint Digital Transformation Minister Jose Luis Escriva as governor of the Bank of Spain for the next six years, a government source told Reuters on Tuesday, confirming earlier reports in local media. Escriva would succeed Pablo Hernandez de Cos as governor and become a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council. De Cos stepped down after his term expired in June and the bank has been led on an interim basis by Deputy Governor Margarita Delgado. As a current member of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist cabinet who previously headed the social security ministry and oversaw a reform of the pension system, Escriva’s appointment is poised to raise concerns about the bank’s independence. — Reuters

UK awards 131 green energy projects

LONDON: The UK on Tuesday said it had awarded a record 131 new green infrastructure projects in a single auction, including plans for Europe’s two biggest offshore wind farms. The new Labour government hailed the outcome to power millions of homes across the island nation with cleaner energy and which followed a similar unsuccessful auction in 2023 under the previous Conservative administration. “We inherited a broken energy policy, including last year’s disastrous auction round which gave us no successful offshore wind projects,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in a statement. — AFP