Turkey's Borsa Istanbul flat at open

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange fell slightly by 0.06 percent, or 59.87 points, to open at 94,483.40 points on Friday.

On the last transaction day of the week, the banking sector index rose 0.13 percent and holding sector index dropped 0.09 percent.

Among all sector indices, the construction sector index showed the best performance, up 0.24 percent, and textile leather sector index saw the highest drop, losing 0.37 percent.

On Thursday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 94,543.27, down 2.74 percent, or 2,667.3 points, with a trade volume of 7.2 billion Turkish liras ($1.42 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rose to 5.1030 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Friday, from 5.0550 at Thursday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate also increased to 5.9120 by market open -- from 5.8850 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 6.6580 Turkish liras versus 6.6080 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil rose to $73.28 per barrel as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Friday, compared to $72.72 on Thursday.

Consumer prices in Turkey went up by 15.85 percent in July compared to the same month last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute announced on Friday. The July inflation figure was up from 15.39 percent in June, standing below expectations.