Turkey’s sectoral confidence indices announced for March

The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) released its confidence indices for Turkey’s services, retail trade and construction sectors for March on their website.

According to the data, the seasonally adjusted confidence index for the services increased by 4.4% in March to 96.9. This rise was driven by the increased number of managers’ evaluations of “business situation” as improved and “demand-turnover” as increased. In service sector, the business situation, demand-turnover and demand-turnover expectation indices also showed respective increases of 4.1%, 3.5% and 5.5% month on month.

However, the seasonally adjusted retail trade confidence index fell by 0.3% in March to 97.7 due to the decrease in the number of managers evaluating the “business activity-sales” as improved over the past three months. In retail trade sector, the current volume of stock and business activity-sales expectation indices were down by 1.5% and 1% respectively while business activity-sales index was up by 1.9%.

Meanwhile, the seasonally adjusted construction confidence index grew by 12.3% in March to 85.8 from 76.4 in February due to the increase in the number of managers who expect an increase in “total employment” in the following three months. In construction sector, current overall order books increased by 16.9% and total employment expectation climbed by 9.3%.