Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek will depart for London next week to hold new meetings with investors, according to bankers, as Türkiye continues talks to draw in international investments and financing to bolster its policy overhaul.
The meetings will be held on Oct. 3-4, five bankers told Reuters on Thursday.
Şimşek, a highly respected policy maker, was appointed in June by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to lead a shift to more convenient economic policies.
Last week, he met investors in New York.
The new economy team of respected technocrats reversed the yearslong easing cycle and aggressively hiked interest rates to cool inflation, rebuild foreign currency reserves and curb the chronic current account deficit.
Şimşek, who also met investors in Gulf states this year, is expected to hold similar talks with investors in Asia by year-end. The meetings, along with the government’s medium-term program, announced earlier this month, have garnered major interest from foreign investors in the big emerging market economy.
Şimşek last week said the country had secured $10.4 billion in external financing since June. Out of this, the banking sector secured over $6.7 billion, the real sector attracted $3.26 billion, and the non-banking financial sector accounted for $367 million.
Erdoğan has publicly expressed his backing for the policy shift that has seen the county’s central bank triple its benchmark one-week repo rate to 30% since June, including two sizable hikes in August and September.
The bank has vowed readiness to raise rates further if needed to rein in inflation, which shot back to nearly 60% in August.
Şimşek has said the economic program has Erdoğan’s support and the president has voiced confidence in his new economy team including Hafize Gaye Erkan, the central bank’s first woman governor.
Authorities have also raised taxes to limit budget deficits, cooled domestic demand, begun rolling back a $123 billion savings scheme that sought to protect Turkish lira deposits from depreciation against foreign currencies, and raised foreign exchange reserves to head off any possible current account deficit crisis.
Goldman Sachs said it may now be possible to “beat the FX depreciation reflected in forward pricing” and that carry trade in the lira could be back.
It also said real rates in Türkiye, still deeply negative despite the flurry of rate hikes, were on track to turn positive by year-end.
