Turkish cbank takes action to back financial stability

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - The Central Bank of Turkey (CBRT) on Thursday changed reserve requirement ratios to support the stability in financial markets.

"The upper limit for the FX [foreign exchange] maintenance facility within the reserve options mechanism has been lowered from 40% to 30%," the CBRT said.

Since the beginning of May, the U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate has been witnessing harsh fluctuations.

The dollar/lira rate stood at nearly 6.25 as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) on Thursday, while the average USD/TRY was around 5.75 last month.

"With the revision in FX maintenance facility within the reserve options mechanism, $2.8 billion of FX liquidity will be provided to the market.

"Whereas 7.2 billion Turkish liras will be withdrawn," the bank said.

In the same statement, the CBRT also said reserve requirement ratios for FX liabilities have been increased by 100 basis points for all maturity brackets.

"As a result of the increase in FX reserve requirement ratios, $3 billion of FX liquidity will be withdrawn from the market," it said.

Early Thursday, the bank also decided to suspend the one-week repo auctions for a period of time to restrain the continuing depreciation of Turkish lira.

The CBRT's decision means around 150 basis points "indirect rise" in interest rates, while the bank's one-week repo rate -- policy rate -- continued to stand at 24%.