Turkey’s sectoral confidence indices send mixed signals

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's services and retail trade sectors posted a rise in confidence in August, while the construction sector saw a drop, the country's statistical authority reported on Tuesday.

Seasonally adjusted confidence indices for services and retail trade was up by 5.7% and 0.2%, respectively, and dropped by 2.3% for the construction sector, month-on-month in August.

The index for services rose 70.5 in August, up from 66.7 in July, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).

"In the services sector compared to the previous month, the business situation over the past three months sub-index increased by 15.9% to 63.2," it noted.

The retail trade confidence index, which rose to 94.9 in August, was 94.6 last month, while the construction confidence index stood at 85, decreasing from 87.

The business activity-sales expectation for the past three-month period rose by 14.5% to 79.7, while "current overall order books sub-index became 70 by decreasing 5.2%".

"Among the main factors limiting activities in the construction sector; financial constraints which were 38.2% in July realized as 40.1% in August, insufficient demand which was 31.9% in July realized as 31.5% in August and other factors which were 19.9% in July realized as 20.3% in August," it added.

Sectoral confidence indices calculated from the monthly survey results are evaluated within the range of 0-200.

These indices indicate an optimistic outlook when the value is above 100, a pessimistic outlook when it is below 100.