Across the 40 or so countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), it’s a mixed picture.
Turkey’s inflation figure was 61.78% for the year to July 2024, down from 71.6% in June. Other high OECD members that previously recorded double-digit CPI, have managed to tame inflation to some degree over the past 12 months, including Colombia, with an inflation figure of 6.86% (down from 11.43% a year prior), Hungary at 4.1% (down from 10.1%), Poland at 4.2% (down from 10.1%) and Slovak Republic at 2.1% (previously 9.9%). Turkey and Australia are both G20 nations, a bloc of countries that represent the world’s major economies and that account for 85% of global financial output.
Although Turkey’s inflation figure is undoubtedly high—largely thanks to the devaluation of its national currency, the lira—it remains dwarfed by fellow G20 member Argentina.
Consumer prices in Argentina rose by 113% in the year to July 2023, according to the country’s central bank, before hitting 211.4% by the end of last year. But more was to come, with CPI reaching a record high of 292.2% in April. Since then, inflation has eased slightly to 271.5% in the year to June 2024.
Inflation in Argentina has been massively elevated since the country’s economy descended into crisis in 2018, when its foreign-debt obligations expanded to unsustainable levels and the peso collapsed against the US dollar. When libertarian President Javier Milei came to power he promised to end the economic crisis, but CPI continues to run hot.
The Argentinian experience might appear extraordinary, but there are three other countries where rising prices have also had an impact.
Zimbabwe, for example, saw its annual consumer price inflation rate skyrocket to around 170% in June of 2023, according to the IMF, stoked by a sharp depreciation in the Zimbabwean dollar. Six months later it was back down to 26.5% and but has risen slightly to 33.6%.
Trumping even this figure is Venezuela, where the inflation rate has nudged 400% in 2023 following years of economic underperformance and social upheaval. It has since lowered to 51.4% by June 2024. Sudan, meanwhile, is battling an inflation rate of 146.6%.
Featured Partners
All your investments in one place
Join 30M users and explore stocks and ETFs
AFSL 491139. Capital at risk. See PDS and TMD
