Turkey's sectoral confidence down in June

By Diyar Guldogan

ANKARA (AA) - Confidence in Turkey's services, retail trade, and construction sectors dropped in June compared to the previous month, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said on Monday.

The services sector index fell 0.8 percent to 91.2 in the month, from 92 in May.

This fall in the services confidence index stemmed from a smaller number of managers seeing the business situation as improved and demand-turnover up over the past three months. However, the number of managers expecting an increase in demand-turnover over the next three months rose, TurkStat said.

The retail trade confidence index was down 2.8 percent, month-on-month, to reach 94.4 in May, from 97.1 in the previous month.

"This downswing in the retail trade confidence index resulted from a decreased number of managers evaluating improved ‘business activity-sales’ over the past three months and ‘current volume of stock’ as below normal for the season. The number of managers expecting an improvement in ‘business activity-sales’ over the next three months increased," TurkStat added.

The construction sector confidence index also fell 2.4 percent to 75.3 points in June from 77.2 in May.

"This decrease in the construction confidence index stemmed from a decreased number of managers evaluating ‘current overall order books’ as above normal for the season and expecting an increase in ‘total employment’ over the next three months," TurkStat said.

Sectoral confidence indices range from 0 to 200, indicating an optimistic outlook when above 100, but a pessimistic outlook when below 100, according to TurkStat.

The next batch of TurkStat data on sectoral confidence is due on July 25.