The Turkish economy minister said on Wednesday that unemployment would drop in Turkey during summer.

Turkey's State Minister & Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan said that unemployment might fall to 10 percent in summer.

"Unemployment continues to rise in many developed countries, but it has started to diminish in Turkey," Babacan told a televised interview.
Babacan said Turkey's economy had started to recover earlier than that of other countries, and this quick recovery caused decrease in unemployment figures.

"1,593,000 people have been employed in the last one year, and this was not seen in any other country in Europe," he said.

Babacan said Turkey cut expenditures and took saving measures when many countries raised their expenditures, and started to diminish tax incentives in June.

However, inflation was a little bit above last year's figure due to oil, crude oil, some fruit and vegetable and meat prices, he said.

"We have taken measures, fruit and vegetable and meat prices have dropped and inflation was again down to a single-digit figure," Babacan said.

Babacan set the year-end inflation target around 6.5 percent.

Also, Babacan said Turkey was the only country the banks of which had no problems during the global economic crisis.

Babacan said one of the reasons why Turkey had been affected the least from the economic crisis was the correct policies of the Central Bank of Turkey.

Turkey would be one of the three most important countries of the European Union (EU) together with Germany and France when it became a member, Babacan also said.

Turkey's unemployment rate dropped 2.1 points to 13.7 percent in March 2010 when compared to March 2009. TurkStat stated on Tuesday that according to figures of March 2010 period (February-March-April), the number of unemployed people decreased 338,000 to 3,438,000. The rate of unemployment was 15.8 percent in March 2009. The number of employed people increased 1,593,000 and reached 21,741,000 in Turkey in March 2010.


AA