Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the week with a 334.85-point decline to stand at 88,947.40 points on Friday, showing a 1.58 percent fall from last Friday.

The BIST 100 index was down by 0.38 percent with a total trading volume of 3.4 billion Turkish liras (approximately $933 million).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate slightly increased to 3.6410 liras as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Friday, compared with 3.6370 at Thursday's close.

The dollar traded for 3.6230 liras last Friday, March 24, after seeing a historic hike -- around 3.94 liras -- in mid-January.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index fell 0.48 percent while the price of gold per kilogram also decreased to 145,600 Turkish liras (around $39,976) as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT), compared with 146,400 Turkish liras (some $40,166) at Thursday's close.

On the last transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices decreased by 0.42 and 0.55 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the information technology index was the best performer of the day -- up 2.02 percent -- while the textile leather sector was the worst, falling 2.01 percent.

Shares of Kipa (KIPA), which operates over 150 supermarkets in major Turkish cities, were the top gainer of Friday, rising 7.51 percent.

Last month, the Turkish Competition Authority approved the sale of Kipa, formerly owned by Britain's biggest retailer Tesco, to major Turkish retail sale chain Migros for 302.3 million Turkish liras ($104.33 million).

Stocks of Turkish conglomerate Ihlas Holding (IHLAS) saw the biggest drop of the day, falling 6.82 percent.

The five most-traded stocks were lenders Halkbank and Garanti, national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, energy and mining company Park Elektrik, and Turkey's leading petrochemicals producer Petkim.

- Halkbank's statement on transparency

Turkish lender Halkbank, whose shares were the top traded ones in the BIST 100 index for the third day in a row, said all its foreign trade transactions -- including those with Iran -- were "open", "transparent" and "observable".

In a statement late on Thursday, the bank said news “discrediting” its operations and misleading the public had been circulating since the arrest of one of its senior executives in the U.S. earlier this week.

Thursday’s statement came four days after the bank’s deputy CEO, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, was detained in New York on charges of conspiring to evade trade sanctions on Iran.

Halkbank said its operations and transactions complied fully with national and international regulations and the lender did not use “any mechanisms, methods or systems other than regulations and foreign trade practices known and followed by all other banks."

- Turkish economy grew 2.9 pct in 2016

On Friday, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said that Turkey's economy expanded 2.9 percent in 2016. Turkey's fourth-quarter GDP reading was also substantially higher than experts’ median estimates, coming in at 3.5 percent compared to the 2.4 percent survey prediction.

According to TurkStat, Turkey's GDP was around 2.59 trillion Turkish liras (some $856.8 billion) in 2016, compared with 2.34 trillion Turkish liras (around $861.5 billion) the previous year.

The decline in terms of U.S. dollars was due to harsh headwinds the Turkish lira encountered last year.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was 3.02 on average last year, while one dollar was traded for 2.71 liras in 2015.