Turkey’s sectoral confidence indices send mixed signals

While indices for Turkey's service sector up in September, retail trade and construction sectors down

Turkey’s sectoral confidence indices send mixed signals

Turkey's services and retail trade sectors posted a rise in confidence in September, while the construction sector saw a drop, the country's statistical authority reported on Thursday.

Seasonally adjusted confidence indices for the services sector were up 6.4% while retail trade and construction sector posted decreases of 1.5% and 2%, respectively, month-on-month in September, said TurkStat.

The index for services rose to 74.9 in September, up from 70.5 in August. Compared to the previous month, the sub-indices for business situation and demand turnover over the past three months climbed 12.8% and 12.6%, respectively, while the demand turnover expectations for the next three months’ sub-index fell 2.8%.

After dropping to 93.5 in August, the retail trade confidence index for September was 94.9.

The construction confidence index also posted a decrease to 83.3, down 2% from the previous month.

"In the construction sector, total employment expectation over the next three months sub-index decreased by 3.3% to 96.6," said TurkStat.

Sectoral confidence indices calculated from monthly survey results are evaluated within a range of 0-200.

These indices indicate an optimistic outlook when the value is below 100.