Borsa Istanbul goes down at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index went down 1,328.71 points to close at 89,484.90 points on Wednesday.

The BIST 100 index declined by 1.46 percent with a total trading volume of 4.8 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.28 billion).

On the third day of the week, the banking index decreased by 2.07 percent while the holding index dropped 2.14 percent -- largest decline of the day. Among all sector indexes, the wholesale and retail trade sector was the top gainer, rising 1.52 percent.

The most heavily-traded stocks were lenders Garanti and Halkbank, biggest petrochemical producer company Petkim, private lender Is Bankasi and the national flag carrier, Turkish Airlines.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate rose over 3.70. One dollar was worth 3.7320 liras as of 5 p.m. (1400 GMT) Wednesday, compared with 3.6760 at Tuesday's close.

The dollar traded for 3.7250 liras on March 3 after seeing a historic hike -- over 3.90 liras -- in mid-January.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index dropped 0.74 percent while the price of gold per kilogram increased to 145,650 Turkish liras (some $39,007) as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT), compared with 144,850 Turkish liras (around $39,396) at Tuesday's close.

Central Bank Governor Murat Cetinkaya said Wednesday consumer price inflation in Turkey is forecasted to show a downward trend in the coming months, thanks to recent monetary measures.

“Pass through from recent exchange rate developments may lead to upside inflationary pressures in the short term; yet, with the support of the tight monetary stance, inflation is expected to trend downwards by mid-year,” Cetinkaya said.

For the last four months, the annual inflation rate has been rising, going from 7 percent in November to 10.13 percent in February -- the first time it has hit double digits in nearly five years.

On Wednesday, the country's Deputy Premier Nurettin Canikli said the worst is over for Turkey's financial markets and a healthy recovery will be observed in the second half-of-the-year.

"The period of high volatility [in foreign exchange rates] is over,” Canikli said in an interview aired on private A Haber news network.

Canikli noted the recovery in domestic demand thanks to recent measures introduced by the government, saying this development was expected to show itself in other economic figures as of July.

"This would reduce unemployment figures while boosting growth. The same is true for consumer prices index. We will see a decline in prices, especially by the second half-of-the-year," he added.