Turkey: Economic confidence index goes up in January

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Confidence in the Turkish economy rose on a monthly basis to hit a 21-month high in January, Turkey’s statistical authority announced on Wednesday.

The economic confidence index went up 0.6% compared with the last month -- to 97.1 in January from 96.5 points in December, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said in a report.

The rise in economic confidence index was driven by three sub-readings of the data, namely construction, services, retail trade and consumer confidence indices.

The construction confidence index was the best performer in the month surging 14.6%. The services and retail trade confidence indexes both were up 2.2% month-on-month in January.

The consumer confidence index showed a slight improvement of 0.1% compared to December.

However, confidence in the real sector index slipped 2.1% during the same period.

The economic confidence index surveys consumers’ and producers’ evaluations, expectations and tendencies about the general economic situation.

TurkStat also said it revised the reading for December 2019 to 95.6 from 93.8.