Türkiye’s central bank registered a loss of around TL 700.4 billion ($18.4 billion) in 2024, according to its balance sheet published in the Official Gazette on Tuesday.
In 2023, the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) posted a loss of TL 818.2 billion.
The CBRT’s Ordinary General Assembly meeting to discuss the newly released balance sheet will be held on April 30 in Ankara.
The loss, stemming from a foreign exchange-protected deposit scheme, prompted the central bank to pass on distributing profit to the Treasury in 2023 and now in 2024.
Under the scheme, known as KKM, adopted in late 2021 to help reverse dollarization and counter a steep fall in the Turkish lira, the central bank has been protecting deposits by covering depreciation costs.
But authorities have been seeking to phase it out gradually and transition deposits into regular lira accounts, in part by dissuading companies and individuals from renewing the KKM accounts.
Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has said the scheme would be terminated without creating any volatility in the markets. The central bank also announced that it would end in 2025.
The deposits under the scheme dropped to TL 744.3 billion as of April 4, according to data by the banking watchdog, BDDK. It peaked at almost TL 3.41 trillion around mid-August 2023.
