Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the day with a 546.22-point hike to stand over 87,000 level on Thursday.

The BIST 100 index advanced by 0.63 percent to reach 87,394.19 while the total trading volume was 5.2 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.4 billion).

Early on Thursday, speaking at Anadolu Agency’s Editors’ Desk in Ankara, Turkey's Development Minister Lutfi Elvan said, "Turkey is still an attractive country for international investors."

"Investors made net purchases of $452 million in the stock exchange in recent weeks," he added.

On the fourth day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices increased by 1.62 and 0.16 percent, respectively. Among all sectors, the banking sector was the best performer while the construction index declined the most, falling by 1.12 percent.

The most heavily-traded stocks were private lender Garanti Bankasi, the country's national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, followed by other lenders Halkbank, Akbank and Yapi Kredi Bankasi.

For the second day in a row, shares of conglomerate Ihlas Holding were the top performer with a 10.26-percent rise on Thursday. Arcelik, a prominent electronics and domestic appliances manufacturer under a major Turkish conglomerate Koc Holding, suffered biggest drop of the day, declining by 2.12 percent.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index increased by 0.89 percent while gold was trading at 146,600 Turkish liras (around $39,300) per kilogram as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT).

Lira continued to gain ground against dollar, and dollar/lira exchange rate dropped to under 3.73 level, lowest for the last three week, during the trading hours on Thursday.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate fell to stand at 3.7300 as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Thursday, compared with 3.7710 at Wednesday's closing session, which was 3.8730 last Friday.

Analysts said investors are expected to follow internally the inflation figures in January set to be released on Thursday plus non-farm payroll data from the U.S.

The World Bank has revised its growth forecast for Turkey in 2016 to 2.1 percent from 3.1 percent, the bank said in its economic report on Thursday.

The bank said it had reviewed the forecast "because recovery in Q4 was weaker than envisaged" but added that net exports would help the country's growth rate recover somewhat in 2017.

"Turkey faces headwinds that will prevent strong recovery, with estimated 2017 growth of 2.7 percent driven by net exports and public spending," the report said.

On Thursday, the Automotive Distributors' Association also said that Turkey’s overall auto sales in January grew 8 percent compared to the same month in 2016.

A total of 35,323 automobiles and light commercial vehicles were sold last month. Cars, of which 60 percent were diesel vehicles, constituted the bulk of last month's sales with 25,689 automobiles having been sold.