By Muhammed Ali Gurtas
ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the day with a 0.07 percent increase to stand at 86,295.72 points on Tuesday.
The BIST 100 index rose by 58.18 points with a 5.4 billion Turkish liras(approximately $1.42 billion) total trading volume.
On the second trading day of the week, the banking sector was flat with a 0.02 percent decline and the holding sector index rose 0.24 percent. The food beverage sector advanced the most --1.97 percent -- while the transportation index was the worst performer of the day, falling 1.23 percent.
The most heavily traded stocks were private lender Garanti Bank, the country's national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, followed by other lenders Akbank, Halkbank and Yapi Kredi Bankasi.
Shares of Tat Gida, which operates in the food industry under a major Turkish conglomerate Koc Holding, were the top gainers of the day with a 13.76 percent rise. Shares of Yapi Kredi Bankasi, a top performer on Monday, dropped the most on Tuesday, with a 3.04 percent fall.
The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index increased by 1.09 percent while gold was trading at 146,750 Turkish liras (around $38,755) per kilogram as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT).
The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate continued to decrease and stood at 3.7870 as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Tuesday, compared to 3.8090 at Monday's closing session, which was 3.8730 last Friday.
On Tuesday, Turkish Central Bank Governor Murat Cetinkaya said price stability was the main objective.
"The Central Bank will continue to use all the instruments at its disposal to achieve the main objective of price stability. In the upcoming period, monetary policy decisions will be conditional on the inflation outlook," Cetinkaya said.
The governor said the inflation rate would fluctuate between 6.6 percent and 9.4 percent through to the end of 2017 and would be at 8 percent midway, up from 6.5 percent in the previous forecast.