ANKARA, July 31 (Reuters) - Turkey's Treasury and FinanceMinistry said on Wednesday that comments by Finance MinisterBerat Albayrak about falling interest rates were referring tothe overall trend in Turkey, and were not directly referring toCentral Bank policy.
Clarifying Albayrak's remarks in a news conference onTuesday, the ministry said he had stated that Turkey would see adeclining trend in interest rates and that Central Bankdecisions on rates "will be revealed as a result of the meetingsit will hold".
It said in a statement that Albayrak had not said that thebank was entering a period of interest rate cuts.
Last week the Central Bank cut its benchmark interest rateby 425 basis points to 19.75%, where they had stood since lastSeptember at the height of Turkey's currency crisis.
The rate cut was Turkey's biggest since at least 2003, andit was the first policy decision under new bank governor MuratUysal, who took the reins after Erdogan sacked former governorMurat Cetinkaya three weeks ago.
Albayrak said on Tuesday that with the recent loosening ofinterest rates "and based on the fact that the interest ratetrend will come down more clearly and strongly in the comingperiod, we have entered a period of interest rate cuts."
He also said that the Central Bank "makes its monetarypolicy and interest rate decisions based on its data set."(Reporting by Nevzat Devranoglu;Editing by Dominic Evans and Jon Boyle)