Baku, Azerbaijan, May 1
By Aygun Badalova, Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:
Depreciation of Turkish lira will not affect the projects of the SOCAR Turkey Energy company, the company's head, Kenan Yavuz said in an interview with Trend.
"Our projects, including STAR refinery revenues and costs will be in US dollar denominated, therefore, the fluctuations in US dollar will not affect our projects," said Kenan Yavuz, head of SOCAR Turkey Energy, board member of Petkim petrochemical holding.
The depreciation of Turkish lira does not have a great impact on successful completion of TANAP project also, he said. "Because, the current shareholders of TANAP are SOCAR, BOTAS and BP."
The company head said that the US dollar gained value not only against Turkish lira, but also against world currencies
The depreciation of Turkish lira will make import difficult, said Yavuz, adding that therefore, Turkey needs to go to an export and employment-oriented structure.
The national currency of Turkey renewed its historical minimum, reaching 2.6862 liras per $1 on March 6, 2015.
Turkey's Central Bank carried out intervention worth $2 billion throughout 2014 in order to keep the exchange rate of Turkish lira at a stable level, however this attempt was unsuccessful.
The process of strengthening the lira (by 9.4 percent) in 2014 continued until September of that year. The exchange rate of the national currency started cheapening in the subsequent months. [The dollar exchange rate in Turkey increased by 7.4 percent by late 2014].
During the latest meeting Apr.22, Turkish Central Bank didn't change the discount rate and kept it at 7.5 percent
The official exchange rate on Apr.22 was 2.6607 TRY/USD, according to Turkish Central Bank.
Edited by SI
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Follow the authors on Twitter: @AygunBadalova, @rhafizoglu
