Turkey: Sectoral confidence up in August

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Confidence in Turkey's key sectors of services, construction, retail trade showed month-on-month improvement in August, the country's statistical authority reported Monday.

The services sector confidence index reached 83.5 in August, up 6.7% from last month as the business situation, demand-turnover and demand-turnover expectation indices did better, TurkStat said.

Data showed that the country's construction sector confidence index surged 6% to 52.4 during the same period due to a rise in overall order books and total employment expectation indices.

The retail trade confidence index posted a monthly increase of 5.1% to 95.0 this month, thanks to improvements in business activity-sales and business activity-sales expectation indices.

Sectoral confidence indices are evaluated within the range of 0-200. It indicates an optimistic outlook when its value is above 100, and a pessimistic outlook when below. It is calculated from monthly survey results, according to the statistical office.