Fears that Turkey is on course for a full-scale financial crisis have intensified after the lira plunged to fresh lows against the US dollar.
Turkey’s central bank was forced to step in to defend the ailing currency – selling US dollars for lira – after the latest sharp selloff.
The lira was at one stage trading at almost 15 to the dollar as currency dealers contemplated the prospect of the latest in a series of interest rates cuts demanded of the central bank by the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Erdoğan’s insistence that the central bank should keep reducing the cost of borrowing despite annual inflation running at 20% has led to the value of the lira halving during 2021.
Official interest rates have been cut from 19% to 15% since
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