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The ruling AKP in Turkey for 10 years should not surprise win in parliamentary elections this Sunday. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is preparing to re-enlist for a third term. Main reason for this success: the economy. A campaign poster for the AKP, the party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on the Bosphorus. The Turks were called to the polls Sunday June 12, 2011 for elections

Over 50 million Turkish voters to the polls Sunday, June 12 for elections that should, according to all polls, offer a new victory in ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The party of current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is credited with at least 45% of the vote. Such popular support is rare for a party in power for nine years.The reason for this success? "The economics of the AKP," said Sinan Ülgen, a researcher at Carnegie NGOs Europe and Chairman of the Turkish think tank EDAM.

Turkey counts

Population: 75 million

Growth: +8.9% in 2010

GNP per capita: U.S. $ 10 079

Public deficit: 3.4% of GDP in 2010

Public debt: 41.7% of GDP in 2010

Inflation: 8.6% in 2010

Unemployment rate: 11.5% in first quarter 2011

When the AKP came to power in 2002, Turkey had suffered the worst economic crises in its history. The country narrowly escaped bankruptcy in 2001 – its currency, the Turkish lira has depreciated by 50% overnight – and had to resort to IMF aid. The result of decades of political patronage budget, high debt and large macroeconomic imbalances."The intelligence of moderate Islamists has been to continue to apply in a very pragmatic structural reforms implemented in 2001 by economist Kemal Dervis under the aegis of the IMF," said Deniz Ünal, economist at CEPII.

The opening of the Turkish economy that started in 1989 and accelerated by the customs union (1996) with the EU, has been continued. The banking sector has been completely cleaned up – Turkish banks now have solvency ratios much higher than in Europe. The central bank won its independence vis-à-vis the Treasury aims to contain inflation. Prices have been liberalized and the labor market partly reformed. Especially, the state has greatly reduced debt at the cost of drastic austerity measures – debt rose from 75% to 41% of GDP today. The Turkish economy has returned to sustainable growth.

17th largest economy

The economic performance of Turkey over the past decade are impressive. Per capita income has tripled, the country has conquered new markets – the Middle East, North Africa and the former republics of the USSR – inflation has been contained to less than 10% and its GDP grew average 5% per year. Strongly affected by the global economic crisis in 2009 – GDP fell 4.8% – the Turkish economy has quickly delivered, posting a growth rate of 8.9% in 2010 – the third highest for an emerging economy after China and India. Turkey today is the 17th global economy.

The AKP has of course failed to play this card during the legislative campaign. And display objectives windfall for …2023, the centennial year of the Turkish Republic; To date, Turkey has joined the top ten world economies, with 25 000 dollars per capita, Erdogan promised. Yet all is not rosy in the economic record of his party. "The AKP has failed during this period of prosperity to complete the structural reforms needed to clean up its growth model," laments Sinan Ülgen.

"Turkey's growth is financed through the massive importation of foreign capital," says the researcher from Carnegie Europe. This capital then finance business investment and fueling domestic demand. "The Turkish households spend a lot and mainly buy foreign products," said Deniz Ünal. Result: Turkey suffers from a chronic imbalance in its trade balance.This current account balance now stands at 8% of GDP, which is "very alarming", according to Sinan Ülgen (in comparison, the French trade deficit represents only 2% of GDP).

Structural lack of competitiveness

Especially since Turkey is a country that is hurt most by the policy of massive injection of liquidity from the United States. Speculative capital flocking to the country last year, maintaining the risk today of a financial bubble. Besides the energy bill is growing rapidly – the country has no resources and provides much of its oil and gas supplies with Russia.

Turkey suffers from a significant lack of export competitiveness. There were several reasons. Firstly, the cost of labor is quite high given the low productivity of labor.The minimum wage is around 450 dollars, a figure higher than in the new Member States of the European Union. Second, labor is not qualified because of low rates of youth who pursue higher education. Over half of 15-19 year olds are not enrolled. The consequence is that Turkey has been unable over the past decade to go upmarket in industrial clusters now very exposed to global competition (automotive, chemicals, basic electronics, etc..).

Widening inequalities

Moreover, the Turkish labor market is atrophied. Officially, the unemployment rate is 11.5%. But only 50% of the workforce participates in employment. The rest work in the informal sector. "Today there is a real duality between large international companies, who say their employees, and SMEs that employ black," said Sinan Ülgen.If the informal sector weighs as much, because the labor market is very rigid: the layoffs are virtually impossible, temporary non-existent and the burden on labor (income tax, payroll taxes, corporate tax ) reach 45% of gross salary, against 38% on average in Europe.

Finally, this economic boom has widened inequalities. On territorial order first, between the industrial West and East areas. While the average annual salary reached Euro 8200 in the capital Istanbul, it is only 1900 euros in the region near the Iranian border. From a societal especially. "Women are completely excluded from the creation of national wealth," laments Deniz Ünal. Less than a third of them are active and two thirds are no longer enrolled after 15 years."For cultural reasons, the AKP has been careful not to upset, women are confined to household chores, which is unfortunate for an emerging economy," concludes economist CEPII.

The rating agency threatened to degrade the U.S. sovereign rating. The concern is the debt cap of the world's largest economy. Barack Obama October 31, 2010.

After Moody's last week, it's time for Fitch to sound the alarm about the U.S. debt. By threatening to degrade the sovereign rating of the United States, the rating agency warned Wednesday, June 8th Congress and the White House that do not progress in their negotiations for a vote before August 2 under the debt ceiling of the State. Federal.

Even in the event of a default simply "technical" does not result from a lack of resources but a failure of political governance, Fitch believes that the U.S. would no longer deserve the "AAA" rating, reserved borrowers with better standing."But above all, a failure of the first borrower and issuer of the world's primary reserve currency would be exceptional and threaten financial stability is still fragile in the U.S. and the world, especially in the context of sovereign debt crisis of Europe".

The U.S. Treasury has responded by saying that Fitch had issued a warning toll Congress to decide promptly, and preferably before the deadline of August 2, raising the debt ceiling, which currently stands at 14,300 billion dollars. The White House reacted in the same direction, saying that the decision of Fitch shows that there is "no alternative to raising the debt ceiling."

Moody's had already said last Thursday it would consider reducing the note if the U.S. Congress had not progressed by mid-July on issues of fiscal deficit and debt.The agency Fitch said, however, believe that an agreement will ultimately be reached in Congress to raise the limit and avoid default.

The high temperatures in spring have boosted sales of beer in France, where consumption could exceed its average for the last five years if the summer would be so hot, says the Association of Brewers.

Since the beginning of the year beer sales rose 2.7%, benefiting in particular a exceptionally hot April. The growth reached 3.4% for sales in supermarkets and 0.6% in pubs.

"Consumption in April was close to average a month from June," said Tuesday's press Chèvremont Pascal, chief representative of France Brewers comprising 75% of beer produced in the country.

"We do not set targets.It is hoped however that consumption will be above 20 million hectoliters this year, "he said stressing that the weather factor was a major component of the variability of consumption of beer.

France, world's largest exporter of malt in Europe is a low consumer of beer with 20 million hectoliters consumed on average per year.

The French drink on average about 30 liters per year, far below the 110 liters absorbed by their German neighbors and six times less than the European champions that are Czechs with 180 liters per year.

But if the weather favors the consumption of beer, he manhandles the future harvest of the basic raw material for brewing, malting barley.

Its price rose by over 50% in just over a month, expressed concern Chèvremont Pascal, who has not ruled out a price rise in the coming months.

Prada has set a target price of 36.5 $ 48 Hong Kong for its IPO in Hong Kong, told Reuters on Monday a source close to the deal, valuing the group at between 11.4 and 14.6 billion (7.8 and 9.9 billion euros).

The IPO must be for 423.3 million shares, or 16.5% of the enlarged share capital of Prada, valuing the transaction at 2.6 billion dollars, which would put Prada on top of its European peers .

By taking the highest price as a basis, the Italian luxury group to deal with a multiple of 27 times its projected earnings for 2011, the source added.

Prada, who made the Asian market 40% of its turnover of two billion euros in 2010, will be the first Italian group quoted on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.

The proceeds from this transaction will allow it to expand in Asia but also to absorb a debt of around one billion euros.

Prada is betting on such an explosion in consumption of luxury goods in China to attract investors to its IPO.

According to the consultant McKinsey, China will represent 20% of the global luxury market by 2015, expenditures have nearly tripled in that time compared to the tens of billions of 2009 dollars.

The starting price for the IPO should take place June 17 and begin trading in Hong Kong are June 24Prada is the symbol of "1913" the year of the creation of the company in Milan.

The families of the CEO Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada's fashion designer wife hold 95% of Prada.

Prada has more than doubled its profit for the year ended in January 2011 to 235.6 million euros and foresees an increase in earnings from 46% in the first half of the year.

Germany did not compensate producers of vegetables that have been singled out as vectors of E.coli before being cleared, said Saturday the German ambassador in France, Reinhard Schäfers.

Spain, which cucumbers had been incriminated as a first step, has announced its intention to seek compensation in Berlin for the injury to its producers of fruits and vegetables that assess the damages at about 200 million euros week.

On Friday, the French Minister of Agriculture, Bruno Le Maire, said the epidemic would have a very negative impact on the French production of vegetables.

Asked if Germany would agree to compensate producers, Schäfers replied: "That's not Germany that this responsibility.We are victims of an epidemic at the moment, is what concerns us. "

"Look at the size of the disaster. I think it's more serious than the losses for producers.At home, sales of vegetables from Germany also declined, the same thing for our producers, "he told Europe 1 radio mic.

"I can not imagine it will financially compensate producers (…) We do have mechanisms at European level to deal with it," he added.

While acknowledging that the German authorities had gone "too fast" by criminalizing cucumbers Spanish, he said that caution was necessary in the name of precaution.

"We found something on some cucumbers from Spain, is when we warned the public, and that it had to do," he said.

"We are in an integrated market where you have to react.The authorities must try to protect the population. If you have any information at some point, you must notify the public. "

Part of Hamburg in northern Germany a week ago, the epidemic caused by the bacterium E. coli infected over 1,700 people.

The German authorities have still not managed to identify the source of the outbreak and continue to advise against the consumption of raw vegetables such as cucumbers, lettuce or tomatoes.

Mild weather and measures to improve profit margins have allowed Kingfisher, Europe's number one arts and crafts, displays a 19% increase in earnings in the first quarter, a performance broadly in line with expectations.

The CEO of the group – owner of brands B & Q UK, Castorama and Brico Depot in France and elsewhere – but warned that second quarter would probably be more difficult than the first, the United Kingdom more than the rest of Europe.

This caution beating down the stock exchange.The action Kingfisher lost 3.4% to 272.4 pence at 0830 GMT after opening down more than 4%.

"The group's cautious comments on outlook (…) indicate that an annual estimate should not change," commented the analyst at Investec.

Kingfisher has reported a profit of 174 million pounds (198 million) for the 13 weeks to April 30. Analysts polled by Reuters expecting an average of 178 million.

Sales at stores open more than a year rose 3.3%.This increase is 5.4% in France and 1.5% in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Kingfisher has centralized its purchasing and also buys directly from suppliers cheaper, especially in Asia, which helped improve its margins.

For the rest of the year, the group stressed that the weather could have been only encourage customers to buy sooner than expected equipment they had to purchase anyway.

"We certainly made a good start, but we still think that this year will be difficult for all retailers, particularly in Britain," he said.

The distribution sector is in trouble in the United Kingdom, particularly because of austerity measures which have lowered the purchasing power.

Kingfisher has 860 stores in eight countries in Europe and Asia.

Unemployment in France, as defined in International Labour Office (ILO), has slightly declined in the first quarter return of 9.2% on average in France (9.7% including overseas departments), despite a rise in youth unemployment over the end of 2010.

The number of unemployed in France came out at 2.618 million according to seasonally adjusted data published Wednesday by interim INSEE. Inflated by the crisis, it peaked at 2.700 million (9.6% of the workforce) in the fourth quarter of 2009.

In one year, the number of jobseekers on the ILO is down from 74,000 and the unemployment rate fell 0.3 percentage points.The rate of the fourth quarter of 2010 was revised up slightly to 9.3% of the workforce in France, Insee said.

The National Institute of Statistics no longer publishes monthly unemployment rate since 2006, after a controversy over its method of calculation.For its part, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, announced Tuesday a rate of 9.4% for France (Dom included) in April, against 9.5% in March and 9.8% a year earlier.

"These positive figures confirm the four consecutive months of decline in the number of registered job seekers since the beginning of the year," said Labour Minister Xavier Bertrand said in a statement.

The government's objective, he said, is "to achieve by the end of 2011 the unemployment rate below 9%.A level above which it is located since early 2009.

THE EMPLOYMENT RATE OF INCREASE IN SENIORS

Figures released Wednesday by the INSEE, however, confirms the continuing difficulty of France to stem rising youth unemployment in the category of 15-24 years, the unemployment rate went up 0.6 points over the period January- March compared to October-December, to 22.8% in France and 23.7% including Dom.In one year, it fell by 0.2 points.

More encouragingly, the decline in unemployment or part-technical, now back to its level before the crisis when it affected 227,000 people in early 2010, none involved more than 47,000 in January to March.

Another trend highlighted by statistics: the increase in the employment rate of older workers, which should continue with the postponement of the legal age of retirement at the full rate.

At 54.2% in the first quarter, the employment rate of 50-64 years increased by 0.6 percentage points year on year and shows its highest level in at least eight years. The increase is even sharper for 55-64 years, reaching 1.1 percentage points from early 2010, to 40.3%.