Forecasts from 13 economists ranged from 4.5% to 7% for the full-year, while the median estimate was up from 4.5% in a February poll. For the first quarter, forecasts from 14 economists ranged from 5% to 7.5%.
Turkey's economy grew just 1.8% last year and 0.9% in 2019, well down from an average of about 5% over the last two decades.
A week earlier the reserves - which have become the focus of the political opposition's criticism in recent weeks - had recovered from 18-year low and stood at $10.585 billion.
The exchange rate used by Reuters on Thursday was 8.2694 compared to 8.0567 the previous week.
Kavcioglu sought in the presentation to convince economists that he would be as decisive as his predecessor, Naci Agbal, a respected policy hawk, in bringing down inflation to a 5% target over the next three years.
"We have given clear guidance ... saying that the policy rate will be above inflation and we will continue that," the governor said in a mostly prepared presentation. "We will continue the tight policy stance."
The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has been pressuring President Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party over $128.3 billion of the bank's reserves that were sold via state banks in 2019 and 2020 to prop up the lira.
In a statement, the bank also ditched last month's pledge to "decisively" maintain a tight monetary policy "for an extended period" to address inflation, which has risen above 16% and been in double-digits for most of the last four years.
The lira slipped as much as 0.7% to 8.125 versus the dollar after the bank under new governor Sahap Kavcioglu replaced the hawkish guidance with a softer assessment of risks to inflation that analysts said signalled interest rate cuts were on the way.