Istanbul, July 25 (HNA) – Central Bank Of Turkey (CBRT) raised the monthly maximum interest rate applied to credit card cash utilization and overdraft accounts to 2.89 percent from 1.91 percent, to control inflation and to balance domestic demand.

Within the scope of quantitative tightening to support the monetary policy stance, the reserve requirement ratio of 15 percent on FX-protected accounts was published in the Official Gazette dated 21 July 2023, CBRT stated in a statement released on Tuesday.

“To complement the steps supporting the tightening process, it has been decided to set the monthly growth limit for TL commercial loans at 2.5 percent, which was previously 3.0 percent under the securities maintenance practice based on loan growth” read the statement, underlining that, export, investment, agriculture and tradesmen loans are excluded from this limitation.

“To support the efficient use of financial resources, it has been decided to set the growth limit for vehicle loans at 2.0 percent, down from 3 percent, and to keep the 3.0 percent limit for general-purpose loans unchanged,” said the CBRT statement and added:

“Moreover, to control inflation and to balance domestic demand, the monthly maximum interest rate applied to credit card cash utilization and overdraft accounts has been raised to 2.89 percent. Export and investment loans as well as loans for the earthquake zone will be exempted from all credit restring measures of the Central Bank.”

The daily limit for rediscount credits has been raised to 1.5 billion lira, while the SME share in rediscount credits will be increased and export growth performance will be taken into account when extending credits.

Conditions to access rediscount credits have been facilitated as part of the simplification process. Accordingly, the requirement to sell an additional 30 percent of export proceeds to use rediscount credits has been abolished.