Turkey’s sectoral confidence goes down in May

ANKARA

Confidence in Turkey’s services, retail trade, and construction sectors dropped in May compared with the previous month, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK). 

The services sector index fell 5.3 percent to 92 in the month, from 97.1 in April.

“This decrease in the services confidence index stemmed from the lower number of managers evaluating the ‘business situation’ as having improved and the higher ‘demand-turnover’ over the past three months, as well as the expected increase in ‘demand-turnover’ over the next three months,” TÜİK stated on May 25.

The retail trade confidence index was down 3.2 percent month-on-month, reaching 97.1 in May from 100.3 in the previous month.

“This downswing in the retail trade confidence index resulted from the lower number of managers evaluating improved ‘business activity-sales’ over the past three months and ‘current volume of stock’ as below normal for the season, as well as the expected improvement in ‘business activity-sales’ over the next three months,” TÜİK added.

The construction sector confidence index also fell 2.1 percent to 77.2 points in May from 78.8 in April.

“This decrease in the construction confidence index stemmed from the lower number of managers evaluating ‘current overall order books’ as above normal for the season and the expected increase in ‘total employment’ over the next three months,” TÜİK stated.

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.

Confidence in the Turkish economy has also dropped in May, official data has shown.

The consumer confidence index slipped 2.8 percent month-on-month to 69.9 in May, data from TÜİK showed on May 23.

All sub-indices decreased on a monthly basis in May, according to the TÜİK data.

The probability-of-saving index saw the largest decline, suggesting less people expected to save money. The sub-index dropped 5 percent to 26.8 this month.

Attitudes over the general economic outlook fell 4.2 percent, month-on-month, down from 94.7 to 90.8 in May.

Turkey’s financial situation expectation of household index also saw a monthly decrease of 1.3 percent, at 89 in May.