Turkey cenbank ups lira repo funding for first time in 3 months
ANKARA, March 1 (Reuters) –The Turkish central bank increased on Friday the amount of funding in the repo auction for the first time in three months.
It injected 10 billion lira ($319 million) in its repo auction maturing on March 8 at a rate of 45%, while bids stood at 41.5 billion lira.
Since Dec. 4, the central bank had been opening daily 1 billion lira repo auctions by the quantity method.
Repo funding constitutes a very limited amount of central bank funding. Rather it is using swap transactions, which stood at around $44 billion as of Thursday, for nearly all banking system funding.
On Thursday, bankers told Reuters that the central bank could provide more funding through open market operations, including repo auctions, after the excess lira liquidity decreased in the banking sector.
($1 = 31.3360 liras)
Reporting by Nevzat Devranoglu; Editing by Jonathan Spicer
