By Mucahithan Avcioglu

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Turkish manufacturing industry capacity utilization rate rose to 74.2% in December, a Turkish Central Bank survey said Thursday.

The figure was up by 0.1 percentage points monthly from 74.1% in November.

The highest utilization in December was 75.3% for intermediate goods, up 0.1 percentage points from November.

The lowest utilization rate was 68.5% in durable consumer goods, down 1.4 percentage points from the previous month.

Broken down by sector, the highest capacity usage was in the manufacture of wood products at 83.8%, while the lowest, 62.4%, was in leather.

The capacity utilization rate figures are based on responses from a business tendency survey of local manufacturing units.

The Turkish Central Bank said 1,828 companies responded to the survey this month, and the data does not reflect the bank's views or predictions.