Opposition’s claims on $128 billion Central Bank reserves untrue: Erdoğan

ANKARA

Claims voiced by the main opposition party that the Central Bank reserves were traded in an illegal way to protect the value of the national currency are not accurate, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, stressing that developments in the global economy in 2019 and 2020 forced the Central Bank to make significant foreign exchange transactions.

“Neither the number is true, nor the meaning attributed to the number, nor the campaign pursued over this figure. Wrong from beginning to end. Ignorance from beginning to end,” Erdoğan said at the parliamentary group meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party on April 21.

Erdoğan said the reserves of the bank were neither given away to anyone nor wasted while harshly slamming the Republican People’s Party and its chair, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, for trying to tarnish the image of Turkey’s Central Bank.

Explaining that the Central Bank uses the reserves in accordance with its duty and responsibility to keep the monetary positions intact in line with the global economic developments.

“Especially 2020 was a tough year both for the world and Turkey,” he said, informing that financial measures taken by various countries to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic totaled $16 trillion and budget expansions by central banks reached $10 trillion.

“This turbulent economic climate affected our country negatively, for sure,” he noted, adding that the country’s current deficit had widened while its income from tourism slipped.

Demand for foreign currencies rose during this period, driven by foreign capital outflows and the real sector’s efforts to reduce its debts in foreign currencies. Tendencies among people to convert their savings into foreign currencies and gold also created additional demand, he said.

“During the last two years, $30 billion from the sources of the Central Bank were used to finance the current deficit,” Erdoğan stressed, adding that foreign capital outflows had reached $31 billion. He added that the demand of the real sector for foreign exchange to pay off their debts amounted to $50 billion, while regular people bought $54 billion worth of foreign currencies and gold as savings.

“As you can see, only four items yielded a figure of $165 billion,” the president stressed, adding that this amount was used to finance the current deficit, real sector debt, foreign capital outflows and public needs.

He said that the reserves were used in meeting the demand of all parties for transactions that require foreign currency, from importers to investors, the real sector to the public.

“For a long time, our Central Bank hasn’t been making these transactions through auctions, but through the market-maker banks working on a 24-hour basis to avoid midnight operations towards our country in Asian markets.”

If the Turkish Central Bank had not met the demand for foreign exchange without hesitation, the situation would be far worse, Erdoğan said, citing Turkey’s economic crises of 1994 and 2001, he added.