Speaking at a Justice and Development (AK) Party group meeting, Prime Minister Erdoğan said, "In ten years time we have paid off a 23.5 billion dollar debt to the IMF. On May 14th, we will be paying the remaining 400 million dollars to close off this debt entirely."
Erdoğan also stated that they are currently working on the technicalities of Turkey granting the IMF a five billion dollar loan.
Prime Minister Erdoğan went on to point out that the 2001 banking crisis cost Turkey 111 billion liras. "If we were to count the treasury's compound interest, then the total cost of the banks going bankrupt was 231 billion liras. We have been paying off these heavy debts that were left to us by previous administrations one by one," said Erdoğan.
DEBT TO NATIONAL INCOME RATIO DROPS TO 38 PERCENT
Erdoğan also pointed out that Turkey has now reached a low figure when it comes to the EU-defined debt to national income ratio. Explaining that in 2002, the public net debt stock's ratio to national income was at around 74 percent, Erdoğan said that by the end of 2011, they had dropped the ratio of debt to national income down to 34 percent. "Turkey's ratio of debt to national income is currently presumably at the 38 percentile level. In Japan this ratio is at 236 percent, in Italy it is 126 percent, it is 107 percent in the United States and 83 percent in Germany," said Erdoğan.
