According to the current financial conditions and the results of the Loan Tendency Survey, there has not been any noticeable change in demand and supply conditions in commercial and consumer loans in the first quarter of 2015. Accordingly, we envisage that credit growth will maintain its current trend in the upcoming period. These reasonable levels in credit growth are expected to continue to limit medium-term inflation pressures on the one hand, and support the improvement in the current accounts balance on the other. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  2. Macroeconomic developments and main assumptions  Now, I will talk about the macroeconomic outlook and our assumptions on which our forecasts are based. First, I will summarize the recent inflation developments, and then continue with the domestic and foreign demand outlook. In the fourth quarter of 2014, annual consumer inflation posted a quarter-on-quarter decline by 0.7 points and stood at 8.17 percent remaining below the forecasts of the October Inflation Report (Charts 9 and 10). Annual inflation decreased across sub-groups in this period, the most remarkable slowdown being in the energy group, which was led by the plunge in international oil prices. The food group remained as the largest contributor to inflation. Core goods registered a slight fall in annual inflation, while the improvement in the underlying trend, which continued from the second quarter on, halted. Meanwhile, we witnessed the considerable effect of the fall in oil prices on fuel-related services and saw a notable improvement in the underlying trend of services.
We announced the outline of the monetary and exchange rate policy for 2015 through a press meeting on 10 December 2014. We also launched new macroprudential policies to limit macro-financial risks and to support prudential borrowing at this meeting. In this scope, to encourage the extension of maturities of external borrowing, we raised the required reserve ratios applied to non-core foreign exchange (FX) short-term liabilities of banks and financing companies. Additionally, we embarked on the remuneration of TL required reserves to encourage core liabilities in January 2015. Moreover, we implemented technical adjustments in reserve option tranches and coefficients to meet the FX liquidity to be required due to the changes in required reserve ratios. We envisage that the automatic stabilization feature of the Reserve Option Mechanism (ROM) will gain strength with these adjustments. Through these policy measures we announced, our final aim is to limit macrofinancial risks and contribute to balanced growth by supporting prudential borrowing. The rate of increase in the loans extended to the non-financial sector in the last quarter of the year maintains a reasonable course owing to the CBRT’s tight monetary policy stance and the macroprudential measures. Supported also by the actions of the Banking Regulations and Supervision Agency (the BRSA), consumer loans grew slower than past years, while commercial loans displayed a higher rate of increase (Charts 7 and 8).