Turkey's sectoral confidence goes down in May

By Diyar Guldogan

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

The services sector index fell 5.3 percent to 92 in the month, from 97.1 in April.

"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 plus expecting an increase in 'demand-turnover' over the next three months," TurkStat said.

The retail trade confidence index was down 3.2 percent, month-on-month, to reach 97.1 in May, from 100.3 in the previous month.

"This downswing in the retail trade confidence index resulted from the 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 plus expecting an improvement in 'business activity-sales' over the next three months," TurkStat added.

The construction sector confidence index also fell 2.1 percent to 77.2 points in May from 78.8 in April.

"This decrease in the construction confidence index 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 June 25.