Turkey’s currency has collapsed amid heavy pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the Turkish Central Bank to lower borrowing costs to boost growth of the country’s struggling economy.
On Thursday, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey announced it was cutting the key interest rate from 15% to 14%, despite inflation running at 21%.
On Friday, Turkey‘s stock exchange halted trading after the national currency fell below 17 lira per US dollar.
“As of 16.24 (Istanbul time) transactions have been temporarily halted on the market of all shares of our stock exchange,” the exchange said in a statement.
Since September, central bank has cut the key interest rate by 400 basis points. Over the past two years, the regulator has intervened three times to keep the lira afloat by selling dollars.
Turkish lira has lost more than half of its value against the US dollar since the beginning of 2021.
