Turkey's economic confidence index rises to 96.1, up for the second straight month in March

Data released by the Turkish Statistics Institute, TurkStat, showed on Thursday that Turkey's economic confidence index edged higher for the second straight month in March. TurkStat data showed Turkish economic confidence index advanced by 5 percent to 96.9 points in the month from 91.5 points in February.

The advance follows a slump in the index to record lows in December and January. All the sub-indexes except retail trade contributed positively to headline rise.

Construction confidence index surged to 85.8 points, up by 12.2 percent and was the major contributor. The services sector was second best performer with a 4.4 percent advance to 96.9 points. The consumer confidence also saw an over 3 percent improvement from the previous month to 67.8 points.

The sub-index for the real sector showed the weakest improvement, rising only 0.2 percent to 106.7 points in the month. The retail trade was the only sub-index in the negative zone, down 0.3 points from the previous month to 97.7 points.