Erdoğan: Central Bank reserves not lost but 'changed hands'

Photo: AA

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President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has denied the allegations about a 128 billion dollar decrease in the Central Bank's foreign currency reserves.

"Neither the number, nor the meaning attributed to the number, nor the campaign carried out over this number is correct. It's entirely wrong," he told his party's parliamentary group yesterday (April 21).

Economists and opposition parties have criticized the government for spending the Central Bank's foreign exchange reserves in order to keep the US dollar from further rising against the Turkish lira and draining the reserves as a result.

Until the replacement of the finance minister and the Central Bank governor in November, the government had implemented an unconventional policy suggested by Erdoğan, trying to keep both the interest rates and the foreign exchange rates low.

"There is no such figure as 128 billion dollars ... Depending on from what date you start the analysis regarding the Central Bank transactions, you may encounter many different numbers," Erdoğan said.

Over the past few months, the CHP has turned the issue into a political campaign, persistently asking "Where is 128 billion dollars?" at the parliament and on TVs and on social media.

Also, it has been putting up banners with this question on its buildings across the country.

CLICK - CHP leader keeps asking about the fate of Central Bank reserves

CLICK - Police remove CHP banners asking 'Where is 128 billion dollars?'

"If there are citizens of our who are confused because this miserable campaign, we want to answer the questions at first hand," he said and explained: "In the past two years, 30 billion dollars from the Central Bank resources were used to finance the current account deficit and 31 billion dollars were used for the outflow of foreign capital.

"Our citizens have bought foreign currency and gold equivalent to 54 billion dollars.

"The 128 billion dollars ... was neither vaporized nor pocketed unfairly and unlawfully by anyone. This money and much more than that circulated between the actors of the economy and our citizens.

"In other words, it changed hands but stayed in our country as a result." (AS/VK)