Sectoral confidence in Turkey slips in January

ANKARA – Anadolu Agency

Confidence in Turkey's services and retail trade sectors slipped while the construction sector rose in January compared to the previous month, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) announced on Jan. 25.

The retail trade confidence index was 92.5 points this month, down 4 percent from December.

"Current volume of stock and business activity-sales expectation indices both decreased by 5.5 percent compared to last month to 111.6 and 89.4, respectively. However, business activity-sales index increased by 0.2 percent to 76.6," TÜİK said.

The services sector index fell by 4 percent to 78.3 in January from 81.5 last month, while the  business situation, demand-turnover and demand-turnover expectation indices were lower during the same period.

Turkey's construction sector confidence index saw a rise of 2.5 percent month-on-month to 55.4 in January.

"In construction sector; current overall order books index increased by 18.2 percent compared to the previous month to 46.4. However, total employment expectation index decreased by 6.2 percent to 67.1."

Business sentiment

Meanwhile, the business confidence index increased from 91.5 in December 2018 to 93 in January, a 1.6 percent increase on a monthly basis, data from the Central Bank showed on Jan. 25.

The 100-point level on the index separates optimism from pessimism. Business confidence stayed in optimistic territory since the start of 2018 through to July last year. In August it retreated to 96.4 and further dipped to 87.6 in October last year. However, the sentiment index has steadily improved since then.

Four of the business sentiment survey’s eight main sub-indices recovered in January month-on-month, the Central Bank data showed.

The sharpest increase was registered in the sub-index measuring the expectations for production volume over the next three month. The related index increased to 106.6 in January from 93.7 in December.

The survey also suggested that businesses expect an increase in employment in the next three months while they also said they would increase their fixed capital investments over the same period.

Unemployment rate in Turkey increased to a 19-month high of 11.6 percent in October, according to the latest data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) released on Jan. 15.