Turkey's sectoral confidence goes down in March

By Diyar Guldogan

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

The services sector index fell 1.6 percent to 99.1 in the month, from 100.7 in February.

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

"The number of managers evaluating 'demand-turnover' over the past three months increased," TurkStat said.

The retail trade confidence index was down 1.9 percent, month-on-month, to reach 102.6 in March, from 104.7 in the previous month.

The fall came from a decreased number of managers expecting an improvement in business activity/sales over the next three months and "current volume of stock” as below normal for the season, TurkStat said.

The construction sector confidence index also fell 5.9 percent to 78.9 points in March from 83.8 in February. This decrease "stemmed from the 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 April 24.