Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer has approved the nomination of the World Bank Vice President, Kemal Dervis, to run the country's battered economy, said reports.
Dervis, 52, will now become state minister for the economy following a government decree signed by Sezer on Friday, reported the Turkish Daily.
Dervis will be in charge of coordinating all economic units, while the Capital Market Board will continue reporting to Recep Onal, State Minister responsible for the Treasury, said the Daily, adding that Onal would not resign.
A political clash last week fueled a run on the lira, which forced the government to abandon a currency peg and watch the lira plunge around 30 percent against the dollar, wrecking an ambitious anti-inflation drive, said AFP.
Turkey is struggling to put its economy back on track after it cut the currency loose, breaching a three-year economic reform program backed by a four-billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the agency added.
Markets took Dervis’s appointment as a positive development amid the absence of an economic management since the resignation of Central Bank Governor Gazi Ercel and Treasury Undersecretary Selcuk Demiralp, said the Turkish Daily.
Soon after his arrival from Washington, Dervis signaled that bank rehabilitation would be a top priority. "It's imperative to resolve the problem in the banking sector. It's perhaps the most important issue," Dervis told a crowd of reporters.
Meanwhile, the head of Turkey's top banking regulatory authority (BDDK) resigned Saturday after his organization was placed under the control of Dervis's ministry, said AFP.
Zekeriya Temirel, 52, known for his honesty and battling corruption, is thought to have been angered by the decision to place the independent regulatory body under the supervision of a government minister.
Turkish law indicates the BDDK's independence must be guaranteed and kept away from ministerial control, said the agency – Albawaba.com
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