Turkey's Central Bank keeps interest rates steady for 5th straight month
Turkey's central bank said Thursday it was keeping a close eye on rising inflation as it left its key interest rate unchanged at 19 percent for the fifth month. The bank said "high levels of inflation expectations continue to pose risks to the pricing behaviour and inflation outlook" and reaffirmed its promise to keep its policy rate above that of inflation.
- Economy
- Anadolu Agency
- Published Date: 04:27 | 12 August 2021
- Modified Date: 04:27 | 12 August 2021
Turkey's Central Bank on Thursday kept its one-week repo rate-also known as the policy rate steady at 19%, in line with market expectations, for the fifth month in a row.
After the committee's eighth Monetary Policy Committee meeting this year, the bank said the strong recovery in global demand and supply problems are pushing up producer and consumer prices alike on a global scale.
"Unfavorable effects of weather conditions in major agricultural commodity-exporting countries are observed in global food prices," it added.
Stressing that the monetary tightening has a decelerating impact on credit and domestic demand, the bank noted: "Taking into account the high levels of inflation and inflation expectations, the current tight monetary policy stance will be maintained decisively until a significant fall in the Inflation Report's forecast path is achieved."
According to an Anadolu Agency survey last week, 16 economists expected no change in one-week repo rate.
At the beginning of this year, the policy rate was 17%, and in March the bank raised the rate to 19%.
Turkey's annual inflation rate stood at 18.95% in July, according to the latest data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).