Turkey: Sectoral confidence rises in December

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Confidence in Turkey's key sectors of services and retail trade improved while construction fell in December on a monthly basis, according to the official data on Wednesday.

Turkey's retail trade confidence index surged 6.3 percent year-on-year to reach 96.4 this month, Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said in a statement.

"In retail trade sector; business activity-sales, current volume of stock index and business activity-sales expectation indices increased by 13.1 percent, 4.6 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively," TurkStat said.

The services sector index rose to 81.5 in December, up 2.2 percent from last month due to increase in “demand-turnover” and business situation compared to previous months.

Construction confidence index decreased by 2.1 percent to 55.4 during the same period as current overall order books index slipped 13.5 percent.