Sharp Fall İn Turkey's Economic Confidence İn March

Turkey's economic confidence index fell by 15.4 percent in March, due to decreases in consumer, manufacturing industry, services, retail trade and construction confidence indices, according to the data released by Turkstat on Monday.

Economic confidence index indicates an optimistic outlook about the general economic situation when the index is above 100 and a pessimistic outlook when it is below 100.

Economic confidence index fell by 15.4 to 74.85 level in March, down from 88.50 in February. "This decrease in economic confidence index stemmed from the decreases in consumer, manufacturing industry, services, retail trade and construction confidence indices" said in the Turkstat statement on Economic Confidence Index.

Consumer confidence index fell by 5.4 percent to 64.39 in March from 68.06 in Februray. Real sector confidence index decreased by 3.0 percent to 100.90 in March. Services confidence index fell by 0.7 percent to 101.25, retail trade confidence index fell by 0.4 percent to 102.97 in March. Construction confidence index dropped by 1.6 percent to 83.67 over the same period.

Economic confidence index is a composite index that encapsulates consumers' and producers' evaluations, expectations and tendencies about general economic situation.

Economic confidence index is combined by means of a weighted aggregation of normalized sub-indices of consumer confidence index, seasonally adjusted manufacturing industry, services, retail trade and construction confidence indices.

Consumer confidence index as one of the composing indicators of economic confidence index is calculated from Consumer Tendency Survey results, which is conducted by the cooperation of Turkstat and Central Bank of Turkey.

Manufacturing industry confidence index is calculated by Central Bank of Turkey and services, retail trade and construction confidence indices are calculated by Turkstat. - Istanbul