Turkey's sectoral confidence goes down in April

By Diyar Guldogan

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

The services sector index fell 2 percent to 97.1 in the month, from 99.1 in March.

"This decrease in the services confidence index stemmed from the decreased number of managers evaluating 'business situation' as improved and 'demand-turnover' as increased over the past three months and expecting an increase in 'demand-turnover' over the next three months," TurkStat said.

The retail trade confidence index was down 2.3 percent, month-on-month, to reach 100.3 in April, from 102.6 in the previous month.

The fall came from a decreased number of managers evaluating improved “business activity-sales” over the past three months and expecting an improvement in “business activity-sales” over the next three months, TurkStat said.

The construction sector confidence index also fell 0.1 percent to 78.8 points in April from 78.9 in March.

This decrease "stemmed from the decreased number of managers expecting an increase in 'total employment' over the next three months. The number of managers evaluating 'current overall order books' as above normal for the season increased." 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 May 25.