Turkey: Sectoral confidence up in March

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Confidence in Turkey's key sectors of services and construction improved while retail trade slightly went down in March compared to last month, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced Monday.

Turkish construction sector confidence index reached to 54.1 this month, up 4.4 percent from February as overall order books and total employment expectation indices did better.

The services sector confidence index rose by 2.6 percent month-on-month to 81.6 in March thanks to improvement in business situation, demand-turnover and demand-turnover expectation indices.

The retail trade confidence index slightly fell by 0.1 percent during the same period to 90.7.

"In retail trade sector; business activity-sales expectation index decreased by 3.9 percent. However, business activity-sales and current volume of stock indices increased by 4 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively …" it said.

Sectoral confidence indices calculated from the monthly survey results are evaluated within the range of 0-200, according to the statistical office.

These indices indicate an optimistic outlook when the value is above 100, a pessimistic outlook when it is below 100.