Turkey's Borsa Istanbul flat at opening

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index started Tuesday with a 63.52-point increase to open at 91,303.97.

In opening transactions on the second business day of the week, the BIST 100 index rose 0.07 percent.

The banking sector index rose 0.01 percent while the holding sector went down 0.01 percent.

Among all sectors, the wood, paper, printing sector index was the best performer -- up 1.01 percent -- while the sports sector index started the day with the biggest decline, falling 0.52 percent.

At Monday's closing session, the benchmark index was up 2,743.11 points, or 3.1 percent, to close at 91,240.45 points, with a total trading volume of 5.7 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.53 billion) -- the highest close since Jan. 26, 2015.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate slightly decreased to 3.7240 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Tuesday, compared with 3.7260 at Monday's close.

On Tuesday Turkey’s current account deficit stood at approximately $2.53 billion in February, up almost by $564 million year-on-year, according to the Turkish Central Bank’s report.

The 12-month rolling deficit rose to almost $33.75 billion, up from $33.16 billion in January 2017, according to the report.