A couple of pointers from the Turkish government’s program
PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the new government program on Friday. His speech included everything, all the way from politics, especially the new Constitution, to Economics.You can read the full details at Today’s Zaman.
On the Economics side, the papers concentrated on the macro agenda (try the Hurriyet and Radikal articles if you speak Turkish), especially Erdogan’s assurances that they would continue to cool off the economy and control the current account deficit. I had no idea they had started to cool off the economy in the first place. Besides, isn’t this the same Erdogan who had recently told us not to worry about the current account deficit?
Anyway, what really got my attention was the micro agenda, specifically:
- Erdogan talked about making labor markets more flexible and protecting workers, not jobs. This all sounds good, but he did not specify what they would do. Anyway, I am optimistic, as I had singled out the labor market as one of the areas in need of reform in a recent interview to the Spanish daily to El Mundo.
- I really liked the approach of increasing labor market participation; making childcare less costly and the like. The World Bank has made similar suggestions, as I noted in a column on International Women’s Day.
Let’s see if deed will follow word. If it doesn’t, it means that his speech-writer / adviser has taken a couple of Economics courses:)
2 Responses to “A couple of pointers from the Turkish government’s program”
ozlemderici • July 10th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
the speech was full of targets, lack of policy moves. we all know what to do, what we don`t know is that how government will tackle those issues. I couldn`t find any guidence of sorts on this, or am I missing something?
edeliveli • July 10th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
No,but I just mentioned two parts I liked. It is true that he didn't specify how to make the labor market more flexible, but he is clearly giving policy moves in terms of increasing women's labor market participation. But as I said in the post, saying is one thing; doing is another:)…
