Turkey's Borsa Istanbul goes up at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the day with a 590.10-point hike to reach 90,653.80 points on Monday following the Yes victory in Sunday's referendum.

Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index was up 0.66 percent with a total trading volume of 3.5 billion Turkish liras (approximately $954 million).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate decreased to 3.6640 liras as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Monday, compared with 3.6920 liras at Friday's close.

Borsa Istanbul's Gold Exchange index rose 0.23 percent while the price of gold per kilogram was 151,300 Turkish liras (around $41,230) as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT), down from 152,500 Turkish liras (some $41,492) at Friday's close.

On the first transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sectors advanced by 0.30 and 0.84 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the leasing factoring index was the best performer with an increase of 3.55 percent while the information technology sector was the worst one, falling 0.70 percent.

Airline company Pegasus shares (PGSUS) were the top gainer on Monday -- up 7.10 percent -- while the stocks of an investment trust Global Yatirim (GLYHO), which has infrastructure, real estate, energy and financial services interests in Turkey, saw the biggest drop of the day, declining by 1.43 percent.

The five most-traded stocks were lenders Garanti and Halkbank, Turkish Airlines and Pegasus, followed by another lender Akbank.

The Turkish government ran a budget deficit of 19.5 billion Turkish liras ($5.32 billion) in March, and 14.9 billion liras ($3.7 billion) in the first quarter, according to the finance minister on Monday.

"Turkish government revenues in the first three months stood at 144.7 billion Turkish liras [$39.5 billion], marking a 9.9 percent rise year-on-year, while budget expenditures were 159.7 billion Turkish liras [$43.6 billion], an increase of 21.3 percent compared with the same period last year," Naci Agbal said.

On Monday, Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced that the unemployment rate rose by 1.9 percentage points in January compared with the same month last year.

The number of jobless people in the country aged 15 years and over went up to nearly 4 million in January 2017, an increase of 695,000 from January 2016, when the unemployment rate stood at 13 percent, TurkStat said.

According to the TurkStat report, January's employment rate increased by 0.2 percent from the same period last year, with the country adding 397,000 jobs.