Turkish Industrialists and Businesspeople Association (TUSIAD) held its Ordinary General Assembly yesterday amid the country’s busy agenda including the cabinet reshuffle expectations, increasing daily coronavirus cases and constantly changing posts in the economy management. Established 50 years ago to make an impact on the governments’ decisions on the economy, TUSIAD’s messages were courageous in the current conjuncture but weak compared to previous terms.
TUSIAD’s re-elected Chairman Simon Kaslowski highlighted stability and trust regarding recent economic developments during his speech. “We will continue to emphasize the importance of issues such as transparency, accountability, institutional autonomy, consultation, pluralism and the search for consensus,” he said, stressing that stability is the precondition for development. “In the last 2.5 years, the head of Turkish Statistical Institute was changed four times and the head of the Central Bank for three times,” he added.
Kaslowski also defined the current economic environment as “increasing inflationary pressure with the exceptional growth due to the credit expansion and both the interest rate and the exchange rate were high”. “The weakness of the TRY will leave us vulnerable to external shocks. We must restore trust in TRY, otherwise it is not possible to solve fundamental problems such as extreme unemployment, reduction in purchasing power, financing of growth” he said regarding the country’s depreciating currency.
Speaking of the currency, USD/TRY increased by more than 3% and saw 8.45 yesterday, however it fell to 8.30 after Central Bank Governor Kavcioglu’s messages about keeping interest above the inflation. Today, USD/TRY started the day at 8.32, while EUR/TRY reached 9.82.
OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) is expected to make a decision at the meeting to be held on Thursday on continuation of production discipline in May. This expectation raised oil prices. Accordingly, brent crude reached USD 64.41 per barrel this morning while U.S. crude oil reached nearly USD 61.
Continuation of the upward trend in U.S. Treasury yields reduced the interest in gold. Spot gold which dropped to USD 1,691 yesterday, saw USD 1,685 this morning.
DAILY AGENDA
>> Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) released Economic Confidence Index. Accordingly, the index rose by 3.3% to 98.9 in March compared to the previous month.
>> TurkStat also released foreign trade statistics. Accordingly, exports increased by 9.6% to USD 16.9bn, while imports rose by 9.4% to USD 19.3bn in February, compared to the same month of the previous year.
>> The Ministry of Treasury and Finance will release General Government Debt Stock Statistics for Q4 2020 (12.00 pm). Gross external debt stock totaled USD 435.1bn, while net external debt stock stood at USD 262.2bn in the previous quarter.
>> Central Bank will release monthly money and banking statistics (2.30 pm).
>> The Constitutional Court (AYM) will meet today to decide whether or not the indictment against the People’s Democratic Party’s (HDP) is valid.
