Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up 1 percent at open

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose 1.01 percent, or 1,178.88 points, to open at 117,599.23 points on Tuesday.

On the second transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices rose 1.22 percent and 0.77 percent, respectively.

All sector indices gained value, with the transportation sector index posting the best performance, up 1.62 percent.

On Monday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 116,420.34, down 0.16 percent, or 182.48 points, with a 7.96-billion-Turkish lira ($2 billion) trade volume.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange dropped to 3.9670 as of 09.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Tuesday. It was 3.9740 at Monday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate stood at 4.9420 on Tuesday, compared to 4.9440 at the previous close.

The price of Brent crude oil stood at $69.55 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Tuesday, compared to $69.62 on Monday.

Economic confidence index in Turkey slipped month-on-month in March, falling 2.6 percent to 100.2, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced on Tuesday.