Turkey’s Central Bank rules out Rate-cut Meeting

Turkey’s central bank said Tuesday it would convene an ordinary meeting at the end of February to evaluate inflation data, ruling out an emergency meeting to cut interest rates after data showed consumer-price increases slowed less than forecast in January.

The lira rallied by as much as 0.9% to 2.4104 against the dollar after the central bank decided to wait until the scheduled Feb. 24 Monetary Policy Committee meeting to discuss their inflation outlook.

Policy-makers made their move after data from the state-statistics agency showed inflation slowed to 7.24% in January from 8.17% in December, missing analyst forecasts of a drop to 6.8% in a Wall Street Journal survey.

“Inflation indicators continue to improve in recent months owing to the implementation of cautious monetary and liquidity policies,” the central bank said in a statement on its website. “The Monetary Policy Committee will assess the inflation outlook in detail at the regular meeting.”

Central bank Governor Erdem Basci had said last week that he may convene an extraordinary meeting on Feb. 4, 20 days before the next scheduled meeting, to reduce interest rates if inflation slows by more than 1 percentage point in January. He reiterated Monday that policy-makers would decide on whether to call the meeting after Tuesday’s inflation data.

Source: MarketWatch