ISTANBUL: Turkey's central bank tripled the limit on an existing swap agreement with Qatar's monetary authority to $15 billion. "The core objectives of the agreement are to facilitate bilateral trade in respective local currencies and to support the financial stability of the two countries," Turkey's central bank said in a statement on Wednesday. Turkish policy makers have been in talks to sign currency-swap arrangements with central banks of Group of 20 nations after the central bank ran down its foreign-currency buffer to prop up the lira. Authorities have been leaning on state lenders to flood the market with dollars, and finding a source of foreign exchange has become increasingly urgent with gross central bank reserves down $17 billion since the beginning of the year to $89.2 billion. The lira erased losses following the news and was trading little changed at 6.7800 per dollar at 9:20 a.m. in Istanbul.