The economic agenda will be intense this week. Tomorrow, the inflation rate for February will be revealed. On Thursday, the interest rate decision will be announced. Here are the key points to know ahead of this critical week…All eyes are on the inflation rate and interest rate decision in the markets. The Turkish Statistical Institute will announce the inflation data for February tomorrow. Following the inflation data, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) will announce its interest rate decision. CBRT will reveal its second interest rate decision of the year on Thursday, February 6th. Additionally, on Monday, domestic producer price index, manufacturing sector Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), banking sector net profit, on Tuesday real effective exchange rate, on Friday market participants’ survey, treasury cash balance data will be monitored. It is expected that the inflation rate for February will be announced as 3% in the markets. In January, the inflation rate was announced to be 5.03%, above expectations. In February 2024, the monthly inflation rate showed an increase of 4.53%. It is predicted that the annual inflation rate will decrease from 42.12% to 40%. Economists expect the policy rate to be reduced by 250 basis points to 42.5%. End-of-year policy rate expectations are currently around 30%. In January, the CBRT lowered the interest rate by 250 basis points to 45%. Leading indicators, Turkish-İş and Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (İTO) data, indicated a continued increase in monthly inflation. According to ITO data, retail prices in Istanbul increased by 3.19% monthly in February. The annual increase was 45.35%. Turkish-İş’s food inflation data recorded a 5.39% increase in February. The twelve-month change rate in food inflation was 43.47%, with an average annual increase of 57.73%. Enflation expectations were revised downward following the reduction in the patient participation fee amount for public health institutions. The patient examination participation fee amount in state hospitals was reduced from 45 to 20 liras. With this decision, economists updated their February inflation expectations from around 4% to around 3%. It was anticipated that the decision to increase the patient participation fee amount in January would have a 1.5 percentage point upward impact on annual inflation.