Bloomberg: “Currency most exposed to the lira meltdown goes from hero to zero”

Bloomberg writes that until early August the Georgian national currency lari was this year’s best performer globally until Turkey’s currency crisis. Photo. N. Alavidze/Agenda.ge.

Agenda.ge, Aug 16, 2018, Tbilisi, Georgia

“The week Georgia marked a decade since its war with Russia, it found its currency under assault from the neighbor to the south”, writes Bloomberg on August 14.

Bloomberg writes that until early August teh Georgian national currency lari was this year’s best performer globally until Turkey’s currency crisis, and now “the former Soviet nation [will] need to adjust to stay competitive with its biggest trading partner”.

Just over the past week, the lari has slumped about five percent against the dollar, eliminating all gains for the year.

To make matters worse, the Black Sea nation’s second-largest trading partner is Russia, which suffered a currency beating of its own this month after the latest US sanctions and the threat of more to come”, writes Bloomberg.

“The reversal of fortunes for the lari is yet more evidence of spillovers from this month’s Turkish lira meltdown, which has already weighed on markets from the Euro area to Latin America. Other nations in the southern reaches of the former Soviet Union have also been hit by the twin routs in Russia and Turkey, with the Kazakh tenge plunging almost 4 percent this month, and Azerbaijan coming under pressure to loosen control over its currency”, writes Bloomberg.

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