Page 48 - BNE_magazine_05_2019

48 Opinion
bne May 2019
A packed room greeted Albayrak as he took his widely disparaged economic PowerPoint show on tour. Dozens were left standing at the back. ISTANBUL BLOG:
Another rough day out of the office for finance minister Albayrak
Akin Nazli in Belgrade
Let’s put this quite plainly. If you know you’re pissing in the wind, the advisable course of action is to stop. So why Turkish finance minister Berat Albayrak opted to once more present his underwhelming economic turnaround plan – this time to 400 investors packed into a hotel room in Washington – is anybody’s guess.
As bne IntelliNews reported after Albayrak first unveiled the plan on April 10 in a PowerPoint presentation in Ankara, the programme went down like a lead balloon with the audience, so just what would lead him to believe that it would be any different in front of a savvier crowd in the US is difficult
to fathom.
“I don’t think he persuaded anybody, it did not go well... If it weren’t the case that the Fed and ECB currently present no risk to emerging markets, I would be a big seller of Turkey,” one investor – who emerged from the presentation venue where audience members were pondering just how long Ankara has to pull things around before the case for turning to the IMF becomes undeniable – told Reuters.
Another tough 24 hours
April 12 proved another tough 24 hours for Turkish assets, with the Turkish lira (TRY) pushed out to beyond 5.80 to the dollar in early afternoon trading before ending the day at 5.77, 0.54% weaker day on day and around 3% down on the week. Turkey’s 5-year credit default swaps (CDS) continued to rise, reaching 448 basis points on the day. The country’s dollar-denominated government bonds due for 2030-2038 repayment all fell as much as 1.2 cents, Tradeweb data showed.
Albayrak, mainly in Washington to attend upcoming G-20, World Bank and IMF meetings, also on April 12 met with Suma Chakrabati, head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Turkey is the EBRD’s leading investment destination and the development bank lately pledged that it would provide more help to Turkish lenders struggling with growing non-performing loans (NPLs) amid recession and currency crisis-hit Turkey’s economic turmoil if requested.
Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, pointed to how the debilitating row with the US over Ankara’s insistence that even as a Nato
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