Turkey’s new finance minister met with a group of businesspeople over the weekend to assure them the government will not retreat from free market principles amid aid a currency rout triggered by consecutive rate cuts as Bloomberg reported.
The six-hour meeting in Istanbul on Saturday was a first for Nureddin Nebati since he was appointed treasury and finance minister on Dec. 2 by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
More than 60 participants at the meeting voiced their concerns on issues including rising energy prices, pending payments by state institutions and tax receivables, according to a Twitter post by Rifat Hisarciklioglu, head of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges. Sekip Avdagic, who heads the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, said he was supporting the government’s “new policy axis.”
A week before he was appointed minister, Nebati posted a series of tweets in support of Erdogan’s low rates policy, saying the current-account deficit was the economy’s biggest problem and that rates should be cut against supply-side inflation.
The minister is expected to meet bank executives later this month, according to Mehmet Ali Akben, head of the banking regulator.
In a phone interview with Haberturk Nebati has said “We won’t raise the interest rate; you will see that we can do this without raising rates,” adding he did not know whether the central bank’s monetary easing would stop.
Wowing commitment to Erdogan’s economic policies, Nebati admitted that Turkish Lira was not under attack from abroad as he claimed there were “a few manipulative, speculative transactions inside” the country.
Turkey’s lira weakened past 14 per dollar for the first time on Monday in the morning trading hours to 14.36 against the dollar in expectation of another cut at this week’s central bank Monetary Policy Board meeting. As it reached 14,75 the central bak intervention began where the bank reportedly sold another USD 1.0 bn in en effort to defend TL.
President Erdoğan, central bank Governor Kavcioğlu and Treasury and Finance Minister Nebati are expected to hold a meeting in the afternoon hours.
Bloomberg, Haberturk, BloombergHT