Central Bank to review interest rates this week

ANKARA

The Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will meet on June 23 to review its key interest rate.

This will be the MPC’s sixth rate-decision meeting this year.

Economists expect the monetary authority to keep the policy rate (one-week repo auction rate) unchanged at
14 percent.

The Central Bank last cut the interest rate in December 2021, reducing the one-week repo rate by 100 basis points from 15 percent to 14 percent.

In a speech he delivered earlier in June, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Türkiye would keep lowering interest rates.

“No one should expect this [increasing the rates] from us. On the contrary, we will keep lowering the rates,” Erdoğan said following a cabinet meeting in Ankara on June 6.

Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati also told a group of deputies from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that neither interest rate increase nor rate cut is being considered in the short term.

“The committee expects the disinflation process to start on the back of strengthened measures for sustainable price and financial stability along with the decline in inflation owing to the base effect and the resolution of the ongoing regional conflict,” the Central Bank said in a statement released after the MPC meeting on May 26.

The Central Bank will this week also release data for the manufacturing sector capacity utilization rate in June and the business confidence data for June.

Separately, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) will release the consumer confidence data for June on June 22