Companies to benefit from lira incentives

ANKARA

The Turkish Central Bank has decided to provide incentive to domestic legal persons holding deposits and participation funds in the event that their foreign exchange and gold deposit accounts and participation funds are converted into Turkish Lira time deposit accounts at the account holder’s request.

“It was previously announced that domestic real persons holding deposits and participation funds would be provided with incentive in the event that they converted their FX and gold deposit accounts and participation funds into TL time deposit accounts,” the bank said in a written statement yesterday.

The bank decided to provide the same incentive also to domestic legal persons under similar rules. Under the scheme, the government has pledged to to pay the difference if the interest yield of lira savings is below the FX yield in the same maturity period. The shortest maturity period for real persons is three months. However, maturity periods will be six months or one year for legal persons.

After the scheme was introduced on Dec. 21, the value of the lira climbed up by nearly 50 percent to around 10.60 against the U.S. dollar. But it has given some of its gains since then, hovering around 13.85 against the greenback yesterday.