September inflation: Georgia 5.6%, Armenia 4.3%, Azerbaijan 5.5%, Turkey 29.7%

Georgia: 5.6 percent year on year in September, with prices up 0.4 percent on the month, published 2 October. Armenia: 4.3 percent year on year and 0.2 percent on the month, published 5 October. Azerbaijan: 5.5 percent year on year and 0.9 percent on the month, published 12 October, up from 4.9 percent in August. Turkey: 29.73 percent year on year and 1.84 percent on the month, published 5 October, down from 31.51 percent in August.

Georgia's September increase was concentrated in transport, up 18.7 percent on the year, and in housing and utilities, up 9.2 percent, while food slowed to 3.4 percent. Armenia's was the mirror image: food and non-alcoholic drinks up 6.2 percent, but housing, utilities and fuels only 2.1 percent and transport 2.8 percent. Azerbaijan's food, alcohol and tobacco rose 6.9 percent against 3.6 percent for non-food goods. In Turkey, housing, water, electricity and gas were up almost 40 percent and transport 35.1 percent on the year.

A lease is a fixed nominal promise in a currency, so the inflation rate decides how much of it survives the year. At Georgian, Armenian or Azerbaijani rates, a rent agreed in local currency and left unchanged for twelve months loses a few percent of its purchasing power — annoying, not structural. At Turkish rates it loses close to a quarter, which is why leases there are commonly written with indexation clauses and why comparing a headline yield in Istanbul with one in Tbilisi without adjusting for this tells you very little.

Turkey's official number is contested at home. The independent Inflation Research Group put September at 46.61 percent year on year, well above TurkStat's 29.73. Both figures are published and both are used; the gap itself is worth knowing about before building a cross-border comparison on either one. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have no comparable public dispute over their consumer price indices at present.