ISTANBUL: Turkey's lira traded weaker against the dollar on Thursday ahead of the central bank's quarterly inflation report, in which the bank is expected to raise its forecasts.

The lira stood at 9.5250 against the US currency at 0553 GMT, trading slightly weaker than a close of 9.4920. The currency has lost some 22% of its value so far this year.

In its last report in July, the central bank forecast annual inflation would ease to 14.1% by year-end. The annual inflation rate stood at 19.58% in September.

Enver Erkan, chief economist at Tera Yatirim, predicted an upward revision to the inflation forecasts, and said Thursday's statement would be scrutinised for which indicators would guide the bank's future policy rate decisions.

"We will try to understand which elements such as headline inflation, sub-inflation indicators and growth dynamics of commercial loans will be the main focus of the central bank and what is the final path of latest monetary policy actions," Erkan said in a note.

The bank has recently focused on a core "C" measure of inflation, which is lower than headline but also rose to 17% last month.

Last week, Turkey's central bank shocked markets by slashing its policy rate by 200 basis points to 16% but said there would be little room for more rate cuts this year given what it called transitory price pressure on food, energy and other imports.