Turkey: Sectoral confidence down in April

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Confidence in Turkey's key sectors of retail trade and construction dropped while services sector posted an increase in April compared to last month, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced Wednesday.

Turkish retail trade sector confidence index dropped to 90.6 this month, down 0.1% from March.

In retail trade sector, business activity-sales and current volume of stock indices decreased to 76.1 and 107.7, respectively, while business activity-sales expectation index rose to 87.9.

The construction confidence index slightly fell by 0.3% during the same period to 53.9.

"In construction sector; current overall order books index decreased by 1.8% compared to the previous month to 40.8. However total employment expectation index increased by 0.7% to 67," TurkStat said.

The services sector confidence index rose by 1.9% month-on-month to 83.1 in April due to improvement in business situation, demand-turnover and demand-turnover expectation indices.

Sectoral confidence indices calculated from the monthly survey results are evaluated within the range of 0-200, according to the Statistical Office.

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