© Reuters. The lira reaches new historical lows a few weeks before the elections
Ankara, Apr 5 (.).- The Turkish lira has continued to depreciate until it hit new lows on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the country is in the middle of an electoral campaign and its economy weighed down by the destructive earthquakes in February.
This morning, one euro was exchanged for 21.25 and the dollar for 19.25 Turkish liras (LT), with which the Turkish currency fell to a minimum as the depreciation registered the day before deepened, when it ended at 21.02 euros and 19.22 dollars, reported the economic website of the Turkish daily Habertürk.
The Turkish government, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has applied a series of measures to stop the weakening of the national currency, ranging from specific interventions by the Central Bank to buy liras to the obligation to change part of the income to LT in currencies.
However, this has not prevented the currency from continuing to depreciate with just over a month to go before the general elections on May 14 and the economic difficulties faced by the Turkish population have made Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) less popular. ).
In mid-January, the Turkish currency once again touched the 20 lira per euro mark, which it had briefly exceeded in December 2021 after a period of sharp falls.
That year, an intervention by the Central Bank apparently caused a sharp rise in the currency, which stabilized it for a few months at around 15 units per euro and 14 units per dollar, until it returned to a downward path in the summer of 2022.
The devaluation of the Turkish currency has spurred the export of manufactured goods in Turkey, due to its low price on the world market, but it has also triggered inflation.
After exceeding 85% last October, its highest rate in 20 years, inflation has slowed to 50.5% in March, according to official data, although independent economists assure that it is clearly higher.
In addition to the persistent devaluation of the currency and high inflation, the country’s economy has been weighed down by the earthquakes that devastated eleven provinces in the southeast of the country, leaving more than 50,000 dead.
The Turkish presidency has estimated the material damage caused at around 105,210 million dollars, a figure that represents around 9% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 and may lower the forecast growth by 1.4 points.
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