Dollar Surges Despite Central Bank's New Moves

- Dollar continues to rise against lira, despite new moves of the Central Bank of Turkey, to stop the weakening of the local currency.

Dollar rose to 2.6453 lira level, close to its record high level at 2.6470 lira, despite releases on two new decisions to provide more foreign currency liquidity possibilites for the financial system.

The last move of the Central Bank was on reserve option coefficients (ROCs), which had been changed "in order to meet the temporary foreign exchange liquidity" needs of the financial sector. The coefficients for the tranches lowerd between 0.1 points to 0.6 points.

"Currently, 32.4 billion dollars is being held for Turkish lira required reserves" the Central Bank said in a statement on reserve requirements.

"Should the facility continue to be used at the same level after the revisions, approximately by USD 1.5 billion would be released from the Central Bank reserves. The revisions in ROCs will be effective as of the calculation period dated 27 February and the maintenance period will begin on 13 March" the Central Bank said.

The Central Bank said, to be effective as of the calculation period dated 13 March and maintenance period dated 27 March, to provide incentives for maturity extension on FX borrowing, reserve requirement ratios of FX denominated liabilities other than deposits/participation funds with a maturity up to 1 year and 2 years would be increased as follows.

"With the increase in FX reserve requirement ratios, Central Bank reserves are expected to increase by approximately USD 1.3 billion and the effective reserve requirement ratio for FX currently 12.7 percent will become 13.1 percent" the Central Bank added.

Central Bank said would provide total 2.8 billion-dollar forex liquidity in March, in two weeks time, in a statement released earlier on Tuesday.