Turkey's Borsa Istanbul hits 27-month high

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the day with a 2,743.11-point hike to reach 91,240.45 points on Monday, the highest close since Jan. 26, 2015.

Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index rose 3.10 percent with a total trading volume of 5.7 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.53 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate decreased to 3.7260 liras as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Monday, compared with 3.7310 liras at Friday's close.

Borsa Istanbul's Gold Exchange index fell by 1.34 percent while the price of gold per kilogram also decreased to 150,000 Turkish liras (around $40,195) as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT), down from 151,700 Turkish liras (some $40,675) at Friday's close.

On the first transaction day of the week, the banking index advanced by 5.87 percent -- highest of the day -- while the holding sector index was up by 2.65 percent where all of the other sector indices also closed the day with an increase.

Stocks of state lender VakifBank (VAKBN) were the best performer on Monday -- up 7.03 percent -- while shares of poultry and feed producer Banvit (BANVT) saw the biggest drop of the day, falling 2.54 percent.

The five most-traded stocks were lenders Garanti and Halkbank, national flag-carrier Turkish Airlines, followed by other lenders Akbank and Is Bankasi.

On Monday, international credit rating agency Moody’s revised up Turkey’s 2017 and 2018 Gross Domestic Product growth forecasts but warned such performances may be short-lived if not backed by structural reforms.

On March 31, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) released a report which showed the economy’s fourth quarter GDP at 3.5 percent and annual GDP growth at 2.9 percent, both significantly higher than estimates.

Moody’s wrote: “Our own forecast, revised upward following the release of the fourth-quarter GDP data, calls for growth of 2.6 percent instead of 2.2 percent in 2017 and 2.9 percent instead of 2.7 percent in 2018.”

TurkStat announced on Monday that Turkey's calendar-adjusted industrial production rose by one percent in February 2017 compared with the same month last year.

Turkey's industrial output is deemed a vital indicator for the economy as it is seen as a preliminary gauge for GDP growth.

Among three main sub-indexes, the mining and quarrying index slipped by 13.6 percent while the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply index and the manufacturing index advanced by 9.4 percent and 0.7 percent year-on-year, respectively.