Turkey: Economic confidence at 86 in September

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's economic confidence index stood at 86 in September on a monthly basis, an official data revealed on Friday.

The figure post 1.3% decrease from 87.1 in August, the Turkish Statistical Authority (TurkStat) said.

The institute cited loses in consumer and real sector confidence indices for the decrease in economic confidence.

"Consumer and real sector confidence indices decreased to 55.8 and 99.7 respectively in September," TurkStat noted.

It added that services, retail trade and construction confidence indices rose to 89.3, 97.6 and 60.1 respectively in the month.

TurkStat said the economic confidence index is a composite index that encapsulates consumers' and producers' evaluations, expectations, and tendencies about the general economic situation.

A total of 20 sub-indices are used in the calculation, with data collected in the first two weeks of each month.

A value above 100 shows an optimistic outlook for the general economic situation, while a value below 100, a pessimistic outlook.

In 2018, the index saw its highest value in January at 105.2 points, as the lowest figure was recorded at 75.2 points in November.