Foreign-exchange reserves at Turkey's central bank surpassed US$100 billion, the highest on record, helping policymakers to limit swings in the currency and serving to underpin the world's biggest bond rally.
The reserves at the central bank reached $100.17 billion last month, the highest since at least 1988, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, up from $75.3bn in January.
Turkish reserves compare with $260bn for India and $10.5bn for Egypt. Lira volatility fell to 6 per centlast week, the lowest among emerging markets in Europe, helping bond yields to fall 527 basis points this year in the biggest drop globally.
Fitch Ratings cited the $24bn increase in foreign-exchange and gold reserves when it raised Turkey to investment grade last month.
The central bank governor, Erdem Basci, spent $16.1bn of the bank's reserves in direct dollar sales and daily foreign-exchange buying between August last year and January to defend the lira as the current-account deficit jumped to a record high. The currency has rebounded 6 per cent this year.
Mr Basci introduced an interest-rate corridor last year, which lets him adjust borrowing costs daily, a policy that has allowed him to cut bank borrowing costs and reduce inflation.
He also increased the proportion of required reserves that lenders can keep in foreign exchange instead of lira to 60 per cent from 55 per cent and the part that can be kept in gold to 30 per cent from 25 per cent in August, saying the changes may add as much as $7.3bn to the bank's foreign-exchange reserves.
The central bank said on Tuesday that it had raised the reserve option coefficient for the reserves that can be held in gold by 0.1 percentage point, which was expected to add $850 million to the reserves.
The bank lowered its benchmark one-week repurchase rate on Tuesday for the first time in 16 months to a record low of 5.5 per cent from 5.75 per cent.
* Bloomberg News
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
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TOURNAMENT INFO
Women’s World Twenty20 Qualifier
Jul 3- 14, in the Netherlands
The top two teams will qualify to play at the World T20 in the West Indies in November
UAE squad
Humaira Tasneem (captain), Chamani Seneviratne, Subha Srinivasan, Neha Sharma, Kavisha Kumari, Judit Cleetus, Chaya Mughal, Roopa Nagraj, Heena Hotchandani, Namita D’Souza, Ishani Senevirathne, Esha Oza, Nisha Ali, Udeni Kuruppuarachchi
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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Developer: Treyarch, Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
Console: PlayStation 4 & 5, Windows, Xbox One & Series X/S
Rating: 3.5/5
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'Gold'
Director:Anthony Hayes
Stars:Zaf Efron, Anthony Hayes
Rating:3/5
APPLE IPAD MINI (A17 PRO)
Display: 21cm Liquid Retina Display, 2266 x 1488, 326ppi, 500 nits
Chip: Apple A17 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
Storage: 128/256/512GB
Main camera: 12MP wide, f/1.8, digital zoom up to 5x, Smart HDR 4
Front camera: 12MP ultra-wide, f/2.4, Smart HDR 4, full-HD @ 25/30/60fps
Biometrics: Touch ID, Face ID
Colours: Blue, purple, space grey, starlight
In the box: iPad mini, USB-C cable, 20W USB-C power adapter
Price: From Dh2,099
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
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