Mubasher: Turkey’s central bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged on Wednesday, mollifying investor worries that it could relax policy after inflation retreated from a 15-year high.

The one-week repo lending rate was kept at 24%, after it was raised by 11.25 percentage points last year, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) said on its website following a meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) on Wednesday.

After the decision, the Turkish lira (TRY) climbed 1% against the US dollar to TRY 5.38.

The CBRT pledged to maintain a tight monetary policy after a currency crisis that peaked last August, despite a slowdown in inflation from a 15-year high of 25.24% last October.

“While developments in import prices and domestic demand conditions have led to some improvement in the inflation outlook, risks on price stability continue to prevail,” the bank said in the statement.

“Accordingly, the committee has decided to maintain the tight monetary policy stance until the inflation outlook displays a significant improvement,” it stated, adding that “further monetary tightening will be delivered, if needed.”

The bank’s next policy meeting is set for next March, weeks ahead local elections, which means that concerns that monetary policy will be loosened may persist.

By 12:20 pm GMT, the USD/TRY pair dropped 0.90% to TRY 5.3982.