What a week it has been! We made an early start to the week with Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Agreement and striking dismissal of Central Bank Governor on Saturday. The reactions followed during the week. The Economic Reform Package calendar was announced then AK Party made changes in its management, except Erdogan, at its 7th Grand Ordinary Congress. The next is said to be the cabinet reshuffle, which we may hear of today, as political columnists expect.
In the meantime, foreign investors’ inflow has finally reached the highest level of the last 2.5 months. Non-residents made a purchase of USD 487.6m in the week ending on March 19. Non-residents purchased USD 60.4m of shares while they also acquired USD 427.2m of government debt securities (GDS). In this period, the Bank’s residents’ foreign exchange (FX) deposit accounts rose by USD 2.1bn to USD 232.5bn.
However, these figures were recorded one week before the fluctuations of markets stemmed from the dismissal of the Central Bank Governor. We all will see positive or negative impacts of this development on the markets by the end of next week. Hopefully, investors won’t regret their decisions to penetrate the Turkish markets and won’t leave…
Looking at the current stage of the financial markets, USD/TRY continues the last weekday at 7.98, while EUR/TRY is traded at 9.42. The USD/TRY saw 8.47 this week, while EUR/TRY climbed to 10.08. In the meantime, spot gold is appreciated at USD 1,727 per ounce with a slight increase compared to yesterday’s closure levels. Brent crude nearly increased by 1.5% to USD 62.91 per barrel.
DAILY AGENDA
The Central Bank will release capacity utilization rate of manufacturing industry for March. The capacity utilization rate of manufacturing sector declined from 74.9% to 74.7% in March, according to the Central Bank.
The Real Sector Confidence Index (RSCI) increased by 1.5 points to 110.8 in March, compared to the previous month, according to the Central Bank.
The seasonally adjusted confidence index rose by 5.1% in the services sector, which also increased by 0.2% in the retail trade sector in March, compared to the previous month, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (Turkstat). On the other hand, the index dropped by 4% in the construction sector in this period.
The marketable lignite production totaled 5.5 million tons, while the marketable production of hard coal reached 96,300 tons in January, according to TurkStat.
Minister of Trade Ruhsar Pekcan will attend the introductory meeting of the ‘Easy Export Platform 2.0’ (11.30 am).
