Belarus

We’ve added consumer price index (CPI) sub-indices from the national statistics office. To visualise how different components of inflation are performing, we’ve charted year-to-date price pressures as they appeared in October 2022 (on the X axis) against their 2023 equivalent (on the Y axis).

As inflation has slowed substantially this year (with year-to-date headline CPI dropping to about 4 percent from more than 13 percent for its 2022 equivalent), almost all of the points in our scatterplot are to the right of the diagonal reference line.

One of the outliers is the alcohol and tobacco category, where inflation accelerated past 20 percent – presumably due to excise tax increases. Healthcare inflation has also worsened.

“Sticky” inflation can be seen in the education and recreation categories – with the pace of increase slowing only somewhat year-on-year. Transport, meanwhile, has slowed rapidly, and a furnishings and household goods category is showing no inflation at all in 2023 after soaring last year.

Turkey

We’ve added government data tracking the number of foreigners departing Turkey in any given month – a proxy for tourism levels. Unsurprisingly, as our chart shows, this figure peaks in the summer, and Turkey is wrapping up a record-breaking year for foreign visitors.

We charted a median line, a 25-75 percentile zone and the high-low range for this data series for 2014 through 2022.The line for 2023 has exceeded them all. Pent-up post-pandemic demand has been a factor for a tourism boom in the Mediterranean more broadly; in Turkey’s case, the cheap lira has probably appealed to tourists as well.