Economic policies will continue after elections: Şimşek
ANKARA
The current economic policies will continue to be implemented after the upcoming elections, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has said.
Türkiye will hold local elections on March 31.
Şimşek, who took the helm of the economic management after the presidential and general elections last year, has been reassuring that the government is determined to pursue policies which are designed to bring inflation under control.
“The policies we implemented with the strong support of our President [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] will continue in line with our goals after the elections,” Şimşek wrote on X on Feb. 22.
Speculations suggesting that the government will abandon the economic program should not be trusted, he added.
Last week, the finance minister assured that authorities will continue to stick to conventional policies.
“We will not do anything extraordinary when we bring inflation down, conventional monetary policies will be employed. Monetary tightening will work,” Şimşek said, addressing the Türkiye-Saudi Arabia Investment and Business Forum in Istanbul last week.
On Feb. 22, the Central Bank, which lifted the one-week repo auction rate by 3,650 basis points between June 2023 and January this year, left its key interest rate steady at 45 percent.
The bank, however, said that its monetary policy stance will be tightened in case a significant and persistent deterioration in the inflation outlook is anticipated.
“As we get closer to the targets set in the program, the inflow of long-term, cost-effective funds will increase even more…Our companies can now more easily access resources in international markets.” Şimşek said on Feb. 22, quoting a post on X regarding the bond issuance by Turkish lender Garanti BBVA.
The lender said on Feb. 22 that it successfully issued a $500 million Basel III compliant Tier-2 with a coupon rate of 8.375 percent.
“After returning back to the market for the first time since 2017, the transaction received more than 8 times demand,” Garanti said in a statement, noting that the deal was the most cost-effective “sub-debt issuance” made by a bank in recent years.
Meanwhile, Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz met with Sameen Farooqui, the head of global emerging markets at Deutsche Bank at the presidential complex in Ankara on Feb. 22.
Later in the day, Yılmaz also held a meeting with Marty Durbin, senior Vice President of U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a delegation from the chamber.
“In our meetings, we shared Türkiye’s macro policies and evaluated the investment opportunities and investment environment in our country and cooperation opportunities,” Yılmaz wrote on X.
