Turkey's Borsa Istanbul goes down at close

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index declined by 202.04 points to close at 75,727.28 on Friday.

On the last trading day of the week, the BIST 100 index decreased by 0.27 percent, while the banking and holding sector indices declined by 0.35 and 0.18 percent, respectively. The total trading volume of the country's stock exchange market was 2.3 billion Turkish liras (approximately $661 million), relatively low compared to the previous sessions of this week.

Among sector indices, the wood paper printing sector index rose the most -- by 1.18 percent -- while the transportation sector declined the most by 1.11 percent.

The most heavily-traded stocks were lenders Garanti Bank, Halkbank, Akbank, Vakifbank, and the national flag carrier, Turkish Airlines.

Shares of CarrefourSA, which operates in the retail sales sector, were the top percent gainer with an increase of 6.57 percent in value, while Ihlas Holding saw the biggest drop with a fall of 3.57 percent.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index declined by 1.61 percent in value, with gold trading at 130,500 Turkish liras ($37,515) per kilogram.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate increased to 3.4750 at 5 p.m. (1400GMT) on Friday, compared to 3.4370 at Thursday's closing session.

On Friday, speaking about the recent fluctuations of the exchange rates, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his call for promoting the use of local currency in foreign trade. "I think we can remove the risk of currency volatility from our markets by taking these kinds of steps with countries with whom we have large foreign trade volume.”

Erdogan’s remarks came just after China’s foreign exchange trade watchdog announced that direct trading between China’s renminbi (yuan) and Turkey’s lira will start on Sunday.

The president also thanked Turkish people for supporting the on going campaign calling for the conversion of foreign exchange to the Turkish lira.