Turkey’s consumer confidence index rose by 3.4 percent in April, reaching 84.7 points, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said on Monday, signaling a recovery from a record low stemming from a currency crisis experienced last summer.
“This increase in economic confidence index stemmed from the increases in consumer, real sector (manufacturing industry) and services confidence indices,” TurkStat said in a statement published in English on its website.
“Consumer, real sector and services confidence indices increased to 63.5, 100 and 83.1 respectively while retail trade and construction confidence indices decreased to 90.6 and 53.9 respectively in April,” it added.
The consumer confidence index hit 75.2 in October, after the currency crisis, when the Turkish lira plunged to 7.28 against the US dollar in mid-August, a 30-point decrease over January data.
A value above 100 indicates an optimistic outlook for the general economic situation, while a value below 100 signals a pessimistic outlook.
“God willing, starting from the second quarter, we will achieve even higher levels thanks to our policies and steps for a structural transformation,” Turkey’s Finance Minister Berat Albayrak was quoted as saying by the Hürriyet Daily News.
Albayrak’s latest presentation to global money managers in Washington was slammed by anonymous attendees of the meeting.
The Axios news website reported that investors who attended Albayrak’s closed-door meetings called it “the worst they’ve ever had with a high-ranking government official.”