Turkey: Economic confidence up in October

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's economic confidence index posted a monthly improvement in October, the official data showed on Wednesday.

The index increased by 4.8% to reach 92.8 in October, up from 88.5 in September, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.

"This increase in economic confidence index stemmed from the increases in real sector (manufacturing industry), services, retail trade and construction confidence indices," the TurkStat noted.

Among sub-indices, services and real sector indices posted the highest month-on-month increases in October with 6.4% and 3.8%, respectively.

Retail trade indices rose by 1.7% and construction index was up by 0.6%, while only consumer confidence index saw a decline with 0.1% in this month.

The consumer confidence index, calculated from the survey results, is evaluated within a range of 0-200, indicating an optimistic outlook when the index is above 100, and a pessimistic one when it is below.