Everything is under control, says finance minister

ANKARA

The currency exchange markets will settle soon and the government is in control, Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati has said.

“You said the [U.S.] dollar is 12.64 [Turkish] Liras today; we have come to these levels from 18 liras,” Nebati said late on Dec. 29 on CNNTürk.

“It cannot be expected that the oscillations of the dollar will stabilize very quickly after such a radical decline in such a short period, but it will soon stabilize. Our morale is not broken; we are in good spirits. Everything is under control.”

Nebati said the rise in the value of the dollar was the result of a “perception operation.”

He also said that 59.8 billion liras ($4.60 billion) were in the FX-protected lira deposits as of Dec. 29. Local invertors’ foreign currency deposits declined by $7 billion to $162 billion since the new scheme was announced on Dec. 20, he added.

Under the FX-protected lira deposit account scheme, the government has pledged to pay the difference if the interest yield of lira savings is below the FX yield in the same maturity period.

The minister denied claims that state lenders sold massive amounts of foreign currencies to strengthen the value of the lira last week.

On Dec. 27, the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) filed a criminal complaint against Durmuş Yılmaz, the former Central Bank governor and opposition deputy, and 25 other people, including well-known economists, over those claims. BDDK alleged that those people resorted to manipulation on social media.