Turkish prices rose at their fastest rate in 20 years as a currency devaluation fed inflation, with food and energy driving the surge, official data showed.

The consumer price index rose 54.4 per cent year on year in February, the Turkish Statistical Institute said on Thursday, outpacing a forecast of 52.5 per cent in a poll by Bloomberg.

Food prices climbed 64.5 per cent and transportation jumped 75.8 per cent last month, pushing the index to its highest rate since March 2002. The release weighed on the lira, down 0.8 per cent on Thursday to about TL14 against the dollar.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calls himself an “enemy of interest rates” and has ordered the central bank to keep its benchmark rate at 14 per cent.

The lira has shed nearly 50 per cent in the past year, and Erdogan is betting that the weaker currency will boost exports and fuel economic growth ahead of a general election next year. He promised this week that his government would “bring inflation under control in the summer months”.

But economists said taming inflation without an interest rate increase will prove elusive, especially as the war in Ukraine causes higher global energy prices. Turkey imports almost all of its oil, natural gas and coal, primarily from Russia.

“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,” Jason Tuvey, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note .

“Inflation will stay close to these high levels until the very final months of this year, but the central bank and, crucially, president Erdogan seem to have no appetite for interest rate hikes,” he said.