Inflation in Turkey rises to 20-year high of 54% as lira keeps losing value

March 3 (UPI) -- The Turkish lira has lost more of its value after official figures Thursday showed that the annual inflation rate in Turkey rose to a 20-year high of 54% in February as the country felt the pain of rising energy prices.

The Turkish Statistical Institute said that the prices of consumer goods rose by almost 5% last month, while producer prices grew by more than 7% from January to February.

According to the figures, producer prices have increased over the past year by 105%. The lira has lost close to half of its value over the past 12 months.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said "foreign financial tools" are the blame for the country's soaring prices and promised to "break the shackles of interest rates," CNBC reported Thursday.

The institute said that Turkey's dependence on imports of energy, raw materials and food supplies helped spur the increases. And those numbers are likely to get worse with Russia's invasion of Ukraine now in its second week, which has driven up energy prices worldwide.

"The spillover effects from the Russia-Ukraine crisis, including higher global commodity prices and potentially fresh supply chain disruptions, mean that the risks are skewed to the upside," analyst Jason Tuvey of Capital Economics said, according to the Daily Sabah.

The Turkish government last month cut taxes on basic goods from 8% to 1% and subsidized electricity bills to give some aid to Turkish citizens. Ankara also increased its value-added tax on electricity, from 8% to 18%, this week to make more power available for residential and agricultural irrigation.