According to figures provided by Turkey’s state statistical institution TÜİK (TurkStat), Turkey’s seasonally adjusted economic confidence index fell by 5.9% to 91.8 points in March 2020 from 97.5 points in the previous month of February. The fall in the index may be attributed to the global spread of the coronavirus epidemic originating in China and the subsequent risks to the Turkish economy caused by the likely downturn in world trade.
The index was revised In January 2019 to allow for seasonal adjustments, and was further revised arbitrarily in January 2020. The revised index at the beginning of 2018 was 106.2 ponts, and this fell to a revised 82.5 points at the beginning of 2019.
The services sector confidence sub-index fell 6% to 92.5 points, the real sector confidence sub-index fell 7.6% to 98.6 points, and the retail trade confidence sub-index decreased 1.2% to 101.7 points, whereas the consumer confidence sub-index increased 1.7% to 58.2 points and the construction sub-index increased 3.7% to 77.2 points.
Despite upward revisions, Turkey’s economic confidence index is still below the crucial 100 points level. In Turkey, the economic confidence index is a composite index that covers encompasses consumers’ and producers’ evaluations, expectations and tendencies about the general economic situation. The index is produced by a combination of a weighted aggregation of normalized sub-indices of consumer confidence, seasonally adjusted real sector (manufacturing industry), services, retail trade and construction confidence indices. The economic confidence index indicates an optimistic outlook about the general economic situation when the index is above 100, and contrarily indicates a pessimistic outlook when it is below 100.