Turkey’s economy may falter | The World Around You
The present situation of the Turkish stock market reflects the delicacy of the general economic situation. After being one of the best performing emerging markets in 2007, Turkish equities lost more than 50% of their value in 2008, then recovered in 2009 and 2010 to new highs before weakness set in from the start of 2011 and accelerated beginning with the summer.
The bellwether ISE-100 index of the Istanbul Stock Exchange closed Wednesday at 55,238, down 13.3% since the June 12 parliamentary elections that returned Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the prime ministers office, and after gapping-down from 59,236 to 56,265 in early August. Since then it has recovered from a low of 50,307. The ISE-100 is a capitalization-weighted index that excludes investment trusts.
The ISE-100 is also down from its all-time high just below 71,000 at the beginning of last November. It is now exactly at the level of a medium-term resistance with some support in the high 40,000s and low 50,000s but also an important and well-established long-term resistance just above 57,000 and a further short-term resistance just under 59,000.
The continuing depreciation of the Turkish lira is therefore a problem because it will cause inflation to remain higher than the central bank target for the rest of the current year, and because it will decrease the latitude of the central banks policy options. One Thursday, the Turkish lira was trading at 1.765 to the US dollar, approaching its worst level from March 2009 at 1.82-1.83, hit again barely a month ago. Just five months ago the rate was at 1.5 lira to the dollar.
During the 2008-09 the central bank implemented a policy of interest rate cuts combined with exchange rate flexibility that greatly helped the country survive the global financial crisis relatively unscathed.
However, higher inflation (estimated at 5-6% this year and projected at close to 7% next year, compounded according to surveys by plummeting consumer confidence) will likely prevent the central bank from continuing to cut interest rates, which would in turn then increase the damper on investment both domestic and foreign.
Having just won a new parliamentary majority, the ruling party and its leaders may well be more concerned with rewarding its followers and supporters at the expense of a general electorate, which will have to wait at least several years to have another opportunity to express its sentiments on a national scale.