Turkey: Sectoral confidence down in March

ANKARA

Confidence in Turkey’s services and retail trade sectors weakened while the construction sector improved in March compared to last month, the country's statistical institute said Wednesday.

Amid concerns over coronavirus, the services confidence index was 92.5 points this month, down 6% from February, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) reported, as all sub-indexes saw slides.

The retail trade sector index fell 1.2% to 101.7 in March from 102.9 last month, driven by drops in the business activity-sales expectation and business activity-sales indices during the same period.

Turkey's construction sector confidence index saw a rise of 3.7% month-on-month to 77.2 in March.

"Total employment expectation over the next three months sub-index increased by 5.4% to 93.4. Current overall order books sub-index became 61.1, increasing 1.2%," it said.