Turkish stocks down at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the week with a 1,356.88-point decline to stand near 87,500 level Friday.

The BIST 100 index decreased by 1.53 percent to reach 87,473.33 while the total trading volume was 5.1 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.38 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate increased slightly to stand at 3.6960 as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Friday, compared with 3.6890 at Thursday's closing session, which was 3.6970 last Friday.

On the last trading day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices decreased by 2.77 and 1.99 percent, respectively. Among all sectors, the communication one was the best performer --0.85 percent rise-- while the mining index fell the most, declining by 2.88 percent.

The most heavily-traded stocks were private lender Garanti, the country's national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, followed by other lenders Halkbank and Is Bankasi plus a major steel industry company Eregli Demir Celik.

Kipa stocks, operates supermarkets in major Turkish cities, were the top performer with a 10.56-percent rise Friday amid the approval of sale of its stores to another retail sale company.

The sale of 173 Kipa stores has received the go-ahead from the Turkish competition watchdog Thursday evening.

On June 10 of last year, the Turkish subsidiary, Kipa, of Britain's biggest retailer Tesco had agreed to sell 95.5 percent of its shares to rival supermarket chain Migros for 302.3 million Turkish liras ($104.33 million).

Shares of Vestel, one of Turkey's leading electronics and domestic appliances manufacturer, suffered biggest drop of the day, its shares decreased by 5.19 percent.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index decreased by 1.21 percent while gold was trading at 145,000 Turkish liras (around $39,221) per kilogram as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT).