Turkey’s 50 banks posted a total net income of $6.7bn in the first half of 2008, an increase of 8.7% from January to June 2007. Despite a sluggish world economy, the nation continues to thrive, boosted by a new wave of foreign investment, increased industrial output and a strong Turkish lira, the country’s supreme banking authority reported. No Turkish banks took losses in the first half of the year.
Yet the international borrowing costs of Turkish banks have gone up, and foreign funds are not as readily available as they were in the past two years, due to the global liquidity squeeze. Growth in the Turkish economy also appears to be slackening. It grew by 6.6% in real terms in the first quarter of this year, but bankers warned that there would be fewer orders for Turkish exports from the country’s main market, the EU, which is sliding toward recession.
