By Gokhan Ergocun
ANKARA (AA) – Turkey's stock exchange fell by 1.63 percent, or 1,581.78 points, to open at 95,603.35 points on Friday.
On the last transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices dropped 1.75 percent and 1.60 percent, respectively.
Among all sector indices, only the chemical petrol plastic sector index saw an increase, up 1.08 percent, while the basic metal sector index saw the highest drop, losing 4.80 percent.
On Thursday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 97,185.13, up 0.22 percent, or 258.34 points, with a trade volume of 14.4 billion Turkish liras ($2.66 billion).
The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rose to 5.9010 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Friday, from 5.4660 at Thursday's close.
The euro/lira exchange rate also increased to 6.7680 by market open — from 6.3420 at the previous close — and one British pound traded for 7.5350 Turkish liras versus 7.0550 at the previous close.
The price of Brent oil dropped slightly to $71.53 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Friday, compared to $72.45 on Thursday.
Turkey's current account deficit stood at $2.97 billion in June, $31.2 billion in the first half, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) announced Friday. It revealed that the country's 12-month rolling deficit reached nearly $57.4 billion in June.
