Turkish stocks higher at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark BIST 100 index rose 0.98 percent by the close of Tuesday’s trading.

It climbed 731.46 points over the day to close at 75,150.56. Total trading volume was 3.4 billion Turkish liras ($1.034 billion).

The banking and holding sector indices gained 1.61 and 1.16 percent respectively while the food and beverage index jumped the most -- 1.77 percent -- while the mining sector registered the largest fall at 1.60 percent.

The most heavily traded stocks were in Garanti Bank, Halkbank, Akbank, Is Bank and Ulker. Shares in foodstuff producer Ulker rose the most -- a 6.49 percent increase in value -- while power supplier Park Elektrik suffered a 2.18 percent fall, the largest of the day.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index rose 0.16 percent, with gold trading at 129,271 liras ($39,330) per kilogram.

The lira dropped against the U.S. dollar to trade at 3.2850 compared to Monday's closing rate of 3.2760.

Meanwhile, the day saw the Treasury conduct two domestic borrowing security auctions, valued at 4.99 billion liras ($1.518 billion).

The Turkish Statistical Institute also revealed unemployment figures that showed unemployment up by 1.2 percent in August year-on-year. The number of unemployed aged 15 and over rose to 3.49 million in August, an increase of 435,000 from the previous year, pushing the unemployment rate to 11.3 percent.

Also Tuesday, the Finance Ministry announced that budget revenues had reached 447.9 billion Turkish liras ($136.3 billion) in the first 10 months of the year, a 12.5 percent rise on the same period last year.

Budget spending from January to October rose to 460 billion liras ($139.7 billion), marking a 13.8 percent increase year-on-year. The government ran a budget deficit of 104 million liras ($31.6 million) in October and 12.1 billion liras ($3.681 billion) in January to October.

On Wednesday, investors are expected to follow the speeches of U.S. Federal Reserve board members as well as inflation figures and industrial production data set to come out of the U.S.