FT on Turkish loans, again...

FT Money Supply's Emma Saunders has taken on Turkish loans, as a continuation of her earlier post that the Turkish monetary policy experiment is working.

She is of course right to say that loans have grown 2.78 percent year-to-date. Let me provide the state of the banking sector in a comparative table:

But once you look at the details of the data, three facts emerge: 

1. There is a big difference between private and public banks: While public banks have cut back on their loans, private banks haven't. That reeks of Chinese-style dirigent capitalism:)
2. Consumer loans and credit cards are going stronger than corporate loans.
3. Among corporate loans, loans to SMEs are the fastest.

I was going to provide a nice comparative table with the numbers, but I ran into some technical difficulties, which I will have to figure out with my buddies at Turkey Data Monitor in the morning. 

I also think that regardless of the data, it is too early to evaluate if there is indeed a slowdown in credit growth or not. For one thing, these data are notoriously volatile, and besides, the latest reserve hikes came into effect only a couple of weeks ago.... So we just have to wait and see- and that's what the Central Bank is doing as well, at least at the moment...