Turkey's economic confidence index at 77.5 pts

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's economic confidence index was recorded at 77.5 points this month, the nation’s statistical authority announced Tuesday.

Confidence in Turkish economy fell by 8.5% month-on-month in May, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.

All sub-indexes contributed negatively to the May figure, the data revealed.

"This decrease in economic confidence index stemmed from the decreases in consumer, real sector (manufacturing industry), services, retail trade and construction confidence indices," it said.

Consumer confidence index posted the highest monthly decline among other sub-indexes with 13% in May.

The construction confidence index followed it with 7.7% slide during the same period.

The data showed that confidence in real sector, services and retail trade went down by 5.3%, 4.4% and 0.7%, respectively, on a monthly basis in May.

Economic confidence index is a composite index that encapsulates consumers' and producers' evaluations, expectations and tendencies about general economic situation, TurkStat said.

It indicates an optimistic outlook about the general economic situation when economic confidence index is above 100, whereas it shows a pessimistic outlook with an index below 100, it added.