Turkey pledges to enhance financial institutions

Turkey will increase the "operational competencies" of all financial and relevant institutions, the country's new treasury and finance minister pledged Friday.

Following a decision on Thursday by the country's Central Bank to hike interest rates, Lütfi Elvan said the healthy functioning of the bank's monetary transmission mechanism would be critical for price stability.

"The bank is responsible for determining and implementing policies and tools that will ensure price stability," he said, adding that it would adopt a simple monetary policy framework in the coming period by increasing transparency and predictability.

Achieving macroeconomic stability, including price stability, will be an important requirement for sustainable growth and increasing social welfare, he underlined.

"In this context, we'll formulate our fiscal policies, financial sector policies and public finance policies in a way that'll continuously support macroeconomic stability and permanently ensure price stability, complementing the monetary policy steps that are being taken."