A French analyst who was very vocal about how badly Turkey’s central bank was handling its monetary policy has basically apologized.
Benoit Anne of French bank Societe Generale has doubled back and now says he feels that he “got it wrong” about Turkey’s decision to cut interest rates at a moment when the rest of the emerging world was struggling to fend off inflationary forces.
Now that inflation has fallen off the market’s radar and many of the countries that were once ratcheting up interest rates are scrambling for ways to foster growth, Turkey looks ahead of the curve, he now admits:
“I now think that the central bank may actually be at the forefront of central bank policy making,” Anne said.
This is a big reversal on Turkey. If the country can go from being considered recalcitrant to leading the way for countries like Mexico, South Africa and Poland, we could finally see sentiment improve.
In the last few weeks, this market has started to lift off its lows — not much, but 5% since August 9 is still better than the precipitous losses suffered by the Turkish ETF (TUR) earlier in the year.
TUR has lost 44% of its value since it hit its high of $78.44 on Nov. 1.