Guler to attend Nabucco summit in Hungary

A summit today in Budapest, Hungary will bring together participants in the Nabucco project, a pipeline to transport Caspian natural gas to Europe via Turkey. Important decisions will reportedly to be taken during the gathering, where Turkey will be represented by Energy and Natural Resources Minister Hilmi Guler.

Turkey and International Monetary Fund have agreed on the outlines of a new standby agreement, said State Minister for the Economy Mehmet Simsek yesterday. In a statement, he said that Turkey would continue talks with the Fund to finalize work on some mid- and long-term structural reforms under the new agreement. Under the deal, the IMF is expected to provide $20 billion to Turkey in loans. In related news, Central Bank head Durmus Yilmaz yesterday predicted that inflation this year would be between 5.4 and 8.2 percent, with a median rate of about 6.8 percent, and that inflation in 2010 would be between 4 and 7.6 percent, with a median rate of about 5.8. He also predicted that inflation would fall to around 5.2 percent by the end of 2011. Stating that a gradual recovery in the crisis-hit world economy will begin early next year, Yilmaz said that inflation falling below expectations would mean less unemployment and a lower drop in production for Turkey. He added that thanks to the CB's recent interest rate cuts, a partial revival in domestic demand would be seen in the second half of this year.