Turkey’s lira gained after the central bank offered to sell $100 million, the most it has offered since the sales began a week ago, and said it may increase the amount gradually in the coming days. The lira rose 0.2 percent to 1.7789 per dollar at 11:32 a.m., after declining as much as 0.7 percent earlier, and trimmed this week’s loss to 2 percent. The central bank will increase the amount of dollars it sells “if necessary,” governor Erdem Basci said in an e-mailed statement from Ankara today. The lira’s appreciation “stems from the market perception that the central bank does not want the lira below the current levels,” Tufan Comert, a strategist at Garanti Securities, said in a note to investors. The lira lost 7 percent against the dollar in the past month, making it the worst-performing emerging market currency. The government-run employment fund Iskur sold $34 million for liras today, CNBC-e television reported. Benchmark two-year bond yields increased one basis point, or 0.01 of a percentage point, to 8.11 percent, according to the RBS Istanbul Benchmark Bond Index. To contact the reporter on this story: Selcuk Gokoluk in Istanbul at sgokoluk@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Bentley at mbentley3@bloomberg.net

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