ANKARA
The Turkish lira dropped in value against the dollar on Tuesday, hitting a historic low of 2.40 per dollar.
The move lower is on expectations that the Fed is planning an interest rate hike after its monetary policy meeting. Higher U.S. interest rates could spur an outflow of capital from many emerging markets, including Turkey, where private sector- foreign debt is now at $165.2 billion.
Borsa Istanbul started the trading day at 82.444,48 points, then tumbled 2778.49 points to 79.787,75 points, a drop of almost 3.7 percent.
When the lira hit the 2.41 mark, the Central Bank of Turkey announced that the foreign exchange needs of state enterprises will be directly supplied by the bank.
Following the bank's announcement, the lira recovered to around 2.37, and the BIST-100 Index bounced back slightly to 79.830,96 points.
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