Türkiye hikes policy interest rate by 650 points

The Central Bank of Türkiye on Thursday raised its policy rate by 650 basis points to 15%, its first such rise in 27 months.

The one-week repo rate rose to 15% from 8.5%, the bank said in a statement following its sixth Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting this year and the first under the helm of Hafize Gaye Erkan, the bank’s new governor.

Ahead of today's announcement, economists' expectations for the rate hike ranged widely, from 14 to as high as 40 percentage points.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revamped his financial team following his May election victory, bringing in prominent figures such as Mehmet Simsek, the new finance minister, and Erkan, the first woman to lead the country’s Central Bank.

Falling for a sixth consecutive month in April, Türkiye's annual consumer inflation rate slowed to a 16-month low of 43.68%, according to latest data from TurkStat, the state statistical office.