Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at open

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose 0.15 percent, or 173.81 points, to open at 117,033.00 points on Monday.

On the first transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices rose 0.15 percent and 0.17 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the leasing factoring sector index was the best performer, rising 0.84 percent, while the sports sector index was the worst, down 0.94 percent.

At last week's close, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 116,859.19, up 0.66 percent, or 772.88 points, with a 5.63-billion-Turkish lira ($1.48 billion) trade volume.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange dropped to 3.8120 as of 09.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Monday, from 3.8220 at Friday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate also fell to 4.6940 on Monday, compared to 4.7040 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil rose over 1.6 percent to reach $64.58 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Monday, compared to $63.55 at Friday.

Turkey's annual inflation stood at 10.26 percent in February, down from 10.35 percent the previous month, the Turkish Statistical Institute announced on Monday.