- ISTANBUL: Growth in Turkish bank loans slowed to less than 27 percent year-on-year at the end of January, adding to signs of an economic slowdown after a year of unorthodox monetary policy by the central bank aimed at preventing overheating.
High credit growth has fueled demand for imports that have led to worryingly high external deficits.
Loan growth stood at 26.37 percent from a year earlier as of Jan. 27, declining from 27.86 percent a week earlier, according to the weekly data published by banking regulator BDDK.
Using the latest data, economists calculate that total loan growth, exchange-rate adjusted and excluding loans to the financial sector, was running at around 14 percent, based on a four-week rolling average.
The central bank has not set a formal target for loan growth this year, but has implied that it is factoring in a 4-week rolling average of between 10-15 percent in 2012, in line with the BDDK data.
Central bank Gov. Erdem Basci, speaking at Davos in late January, said credit growth was running at roughly around 10 percent.
Last year, the central bank had used a year-on-year measure rather than the 4-week data to target credit growth.
Year-on-year loans growth stood at 29.50 percent at the end of 2011, above the central bank's target of 25 percent growth for the full year, but slowing from 34 percent in 2010.
