23 May 2018•Update: 23 May 2018
ISTANBUL
The Borsa Istanbul Group announced on Wednesday that it converted all its foreign exchange assets, excluding short terms needs, into Turkish lira.
"It is seen that speculative approaches for showing Turkish economy as negative before elections [on June 24] are not backed by current indicators. As Borsa Istanbul we would like to reemphasis our commitment and confidence to Turkish economy and lira," it said in a statement.
The move came after U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate saw a historic high, climbing over 4.7500 at Wednesday's market opening.
Turkey's sole stock exchange group said the decision was taken while considering that among financial tables of all sectors and companies, there is no economic data that shows a necessity for such high levels of foreign exchange rates.
Emerging markets’ local currencies have been weakening against the U.S. dollar since the beginning of this year. The U.S. dollar gained around 26 percent against Turkish lira, nearly 24 percent against Argentine peso, almost 11 percent against Brazil real, more than 7 percent against Russian ruble and around 6 percent against Indian rupee.
The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira rate was at 3.78 at the beginning of this year while last year one U.S. dollar traded for 3.65 lira on average.
Reporting by Burhan Sansarlioglu:Writing by Tuba Sahin
