Turkey: Sectoral confidence up in March

By Tuba Sahin</p> <p>ANKARA (AA) – Confidence in Turkey's key sectors of services and construction improved while retail trade slightly went down in March compared to last month, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced Monday.</p> <p>Turkish construction sector confidence index reached to 54.1 this month, up 4.4 percent from February as overall order books and total employment expectation indices did better.</p> <p>The services sector confidence index rose by 2.6 percent month-on-month to 81.6 in March thanks to improvement in business situation, demand-turnover and demand-turnover expectation indices.</p> <p>The retail trade confidence index slightly fell by 0.1 percent during the same period to 90.7. </p> <p>&quot;In retail trade sector; business activity-sales expectation index decreased by 3.9 percent. However, business activity-sales and current volume of stock indices increased by 4 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively …&quot; it said. </p> <p>Sectoral confidence indices calculated from the monthly survey results are evaluated within the range of 0-200, according to the statistical office.</p> <p>These indices indicate an optimistic outlook when the value is above 100, a pessimistic outlook when it is below 100.