ISTANBUL: Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan told a call with international investors on Tuesday that they would do whatever was needed to tame the market jitters triggered by the arrest of President Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival.
Simsek told investors he would not comment on judicial matters and the events of the last two weeks, but said there would be no lasting rise in inflation and that he intended to stay in his post, according to two sources on the call.
Simsek also said there would be no change in approach to the programme he introduced in mid-2023 that uses tight monetary policy to bring down inflation.
Last Wednesday, police detained Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, President Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival, and a court jailed him on Sunday pending trial on corruption charges, sparking Turkey’s biggest protests in more than a decade.
Ahead of Tuesday’s investor call Himanshu Porwal, EM analyst at Seaport Global said that the markets had been reacting positively over the last couple of days to the measures taken to settle the markets.
“I think they (central bank, finance minister) have been doing what is required. FX is usually the first trigger you look at and so far the move has been contained, so I think people are coming to terms with it already,” Porwal said.
The Borsa Istanbul benchmark index ended last week down 16.6%, its worst drop since the global financial crisis in October 2008.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.