Hazelnut Market Update December 2021 Week 51

The Turkish Lira has been out of control in the past few days. On Thursday, USD/TL was as high as 17.5. But at the beginning of the week, President Erdogan offered new financial alternatives to help them in this situation.

He said the following: "If people keep their savings in the bank are higher than the exchange rate increase, they will earn this return. If the exchange rate return is above the deposit earnings, people will pay the difference directly. The earnings will be exempt from withholding tax. From now on, no citizen will need to switch their deposits from TL to foreign currency just because the exchange rate will be higher."

Following these words, we saw the Turkish Lira gaining strength against the US dollar once more. People started changing their savings from USD/EURO to TL. We've seen that the president and citizens have a kind of a swap agreement, and so most made their conversion through online banking.

It is expected that currency won't go as high as it did during the past few days, but it will stay somewhere between 12 and 14 TL.

Regarding the hazelnut market conditions, this new currency trend will definitely affect the market for sure. Farmers have only 10% of hazelnut crops left, and the TMO has bought hazelnuts from the market at 3.10 to 3.30 USD, with plans to sell this at 3.5 USD (min) to exporters.

The TMO has also announced that they will close several purchasing stations due to the free-market's price exceeding TMO's purchasing price.

Locally, yesterday some companies bought in-shell hazelnuts at 40 TL/kg, which caused the farmers to keep their crops, so there will be no incoming goods yet. These are several factors that have led to the increase in hazelnut prices, and it is not expected to go down anytime soon. We will let you know as the situation develops.