Turkey will require exporters to convert a quarter of their revenue to liras, the latest step in the government’s efforts to boost its reserves and support the local currency, Bloomberg reported.
The central bank will buy 25 percent of all income from exports of goods so long as the exporters receive payments in US dollars, euros or pounds, the monetary authority said in a decree on Monday.
The measure is aimed at boosting Turkey’s foreign currency reserves by forcing companies to keep some of their revenues from sales abroad in the local currency. It comes after a year of severe losses in the lira, which lost nearly half of its value against the dollar last year as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on the central bank to lower its benchmark interest rate.
The lira is trading 0.3 percent weaker at 13.3430 per dollar at 3:54 pm in İstanbul, extending losses over the past year to just over 44 percent, the biggest such slump among major currencies tracked by Bloomberg.