Turkey's Economic Confidence Index rises

By Fatih Erkan Dogan

ANKARA (AA) - The confidence in Turkey’s economy has increased in March, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute Thursday.

The Economic Confidence Index advanced by 5 percent to 96.9 points in the month from 91.5 points in February, TurkStat said in a report.

“This increase in economic confidence index stemmed from the increase in construction, services, consumer and real sector confidence indices,” it said.

Data showed that all sub-indexes except retail trade contributed positively to the healthy improvement in main reading with advances up to 12.3 percent.

Construction confidence index was the best performer in the month, surging to 85.8 points, up by 12.2 percent.

Services was second best sector with a 4.4 percent advance to 96.9 points. The consumer confidence also saw an over 3 percent improvement from the previous month to 67.8 points.

Although being in the positive territory, the sub-index for the real sector showed the weakest improvement among sub-indexes, rising only 0.2 percent to 106.7 points in the month.

The retail trade reading was the only sub-index in negative zone, suffering 0.3 points from the previous month to 97.7 points.