Turkey’s sectoral confidence goes down in March

ANKARA – Anadolu Agency

Confidence in Turkey’s services, retail trade and construction sectors fell in March compared with the previous month, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) stated on March 22.

The services sector index fell 1.6 percentage points to 99.1 in the month, from 100.7 in February. 

“This decrease in the services confidence index stemmed from the decreased number of managers evaluating that the ‘business situation’ had improved over the past three months and expecting an increase in ‘demand-turnover’ over the next three months,” TÜİK stated.

The retail trade confidence index was down 1.9 percentage points, month-on-month, to 102.6 in March, from 104.7 in the previous month.

The fall came from a decreased number of managers expecting an improvement in business activity and sales over the next three months and because the “current volume of stock” is below normal for the season, TÜİK stated.

The construction sector confidence index also fell 5.9 points to 78.9 in March from 83.8 in February. This decrease “stemmed from the decreased number of managers evaluating ‘current overall order books’ as above normal for the season and expecting an increase in ‘total employment’ over the next three months,” TUİK noted.

Sectoral confidence indices range from 0 to 200, indicating an optimistic outlook when above 100 but a pessimistic outlook when below 100, according to TÜİK.