Turkish stocks up more than 1 percent at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark BIST 100 index closed 1.4 percent higher on Tuesday at 84,207.89 points.

The market rose 1,160.09 points during the day, which saw a total trading volume of 5.4 billion Turkish liras ($1.44 billion).

The banking and holding sectors rose by 1.42 and 1.87 percent respectively following rises on Monday.

The transport sector jumped the most with a 4.74 percent hike while the sports index was the worst performer, dropping by 1.46 percent.

The most heavily traded stocks were in Garanti Bank and Turkish Airlines followed by lenders Halkbank and Akbank and airline Pegasus.

Turkish Airlines’ shares were the best performer of the day with a 5.77 percent rise while conglomerate Ihlas Holding suffered a fall of 3.03 percent, the biggest drop of the day.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index fell by 0.32 percent. Gold was trading at 147,160 Turkish liras ($39,127) per kilogram as of 4.30 p.m. local time (1330GMT).

The lira continued to gain against the U.S. dollar and the dollar/lira exchange rate fell to 3.7600 at 5 p.m. local time (1400GMT), compared to 3.7740 at Monday’s closing. The lira closed last week at 3.8200.

- Repo auction cancelled

Early Tuesday, the Central Bank cancelled holding its one-week repo auction for the ninth time in a row and signaled it would continue to do so until volatility in foreign exchange rates calmed.

The bank’s Monetary Policy Committee met Tuesday and hiked the overnight lending rate by 75 base points to 9.25 percent. The borrowing rate remained unchanged at 7.25 percent.

Analysts said the Central Bank continued to use alternatives to raising interest rates in a bid to control price stability and kept the door open for further action.

Investors are expected to follow international credit rating agency Fitch’s review on Turkey, which is due on Friday.

According to a Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) statement on Tuesday, annual property sales in Turkey rose by 4 percent in 2016.

TurkStat said a total of 1,341,453 houses changed hands in Turkey between January and December, marking a 4 percent increase compared to the 1,289,320 properties sold in 2015.

Of those, 18,189 were sold to foreigners, with approximately 32 percent (5,811 units) in Istanbul.

In another report on Tuesday, the Turkish Highways Directorate said Turkey earned 1.2 billion Turkish liras ($320.43 million) in tolls from two Istanbul bridges and toll roads in 2016.

The July 15 Martyrs’ Bridge and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, both spanning the Bosphorus, together yielded around 290.5 million liras ($77.3 million) while toll highways earned almost 914 million liras ($243.1 million) last year.