The G-20 meeting was held virtually for the second time yesterday, showing that the physical gatherings continue to be a risk for high-levels (jus as for everyone) albeit at a diminishing pace. Although considered more affordable, functional and accessible, virtual meetings started to bore all of us. We know through our conversations with the business world that they are also looking forward to physical gatherings to be able to take more concrete steps on their investment plans and shake hands with their potential business partners.
This seems to take time considering the increasing COVID-19 cases, which have neared 55,000 in Turkey, indicating that we are one step closer to the third peak… Nothing but the progress in vaccination will decide whether we will be back to our normal way of doing business. Getting back to the issue at hand, Minister of Treasury and Finance Lutfi Elvan and the Central Bank Governor Sahap Kavcioglu made their remarks on the G-20 meeting through another virtual platform, twitter.
“We attended to the G-20 Ministerial Meeting, which touched upon the power of developing countries in global recovery, emphasized on necessity of transparent and well-timed communication among the central bank governors of the developed countries. It was decided to support low-income countries,” Elvan said. Kavcioglu’s post was more generic. “We gathered with Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of G-20 countries. We evaluated the updates on the COVID-19 Action Plan and compared notes about global economic and financial developments,” he said.
The tenth summit of the Developing Eight (D-8) Organization for Economic Cooperation, will also be held virtually today.
Pricing the risks created by the pandemic, the markets may have their own agenda. At today’s outlook, USD/TRY starts the new day at around 8.16, while EUR/TRY is traded at just above 9.70. However, the weak course of USD continues at the global markets. The USD index stands at 92,425 in Asian markets.
Gold prices declined after investors tended to risky assets. Spot gold saw USD 1,745 per ounce. Oil prices also decreased after concerns over weakening of crude oil demand stemmed from unexpected increase in fuel stocks in the U.S. Accordingly, brent crude declined to USD 62.71 per barrel, while U.S. crude oil saw below USD 60.
DAILY AGENDA
>> President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will attend the tenth summit of the Developing Eight (D-8) Organization for Economic Cooperation virtually today at 12.00 pm.
>> The Ministry of Trade released Foreign Trade Expectation Survey for Q2. Accordingly, the Export Expectation Index increased by 17.1 points to 132, while the Import Expectation Index dropped by 1.2 points to 111.6 for Q2 compared to the previous quarter.
>> The Central Bank and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) will release weekly money and banking statistics (2.30 pm).
>> The Ministry of Treasury and Finance will release total domestic debt roll over ratio and maturity (5.30 pm).
