Turkey's Borsa Istanbul flat at opening session

By Dilara Zengin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index started the day with a 1.73-point increase to open at 89,283.98 points on Friday.

On the last transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indexes went up 0.10 percent and 0.06 percent, respectively.

The food beverage sector index was the best performer -- up 0.59 percent -- while the communications index started Friday with the biggest decline, falling 0.55 percent.

In Thursday's closing session, the benchmark index slightly increased 12.53 points or 0.01 percent to 89,282.25 with a total trading volume of 2.9 billion Turkish liras (approximately $795 million).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate rose to 3.6410 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Friday, compared with 3.6370 at Thursday's close.

Meanwhile, Turkey's economic growth and foreign trade index were announced on Friday.

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), Turkey’s growth rate was at 3.5 percent in the last quarter of last year and at 2.9 percent in 2016.

Turkey's foreign trade deficit widened by 15 percent in February year-on-year, TurkStat said.