Turkish consumer confidence index improves in May

Consumer confidence in the Turkish economy recovered this month, Turkey's statistical authority announced Wednesday.

The consumer confidence index hit 59.5 this month, an 8.5% rise from April when the figure was 54.9, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.

The index value is jointly calculated by TurkStat and the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) through the measurement of consumer tendencies.

All sub-indexes contributed positively to the improvement in the main reading as all sub-indexes increased.

Tracking consumers' tendency to save money over the next 12 months, the probability of saving index posted the largest increase. The index saw an 18% increase compared with last month to 21.7 in May.

The general economic situation expectation index went up 9.5% to 81.8 during the same period which shows that the number of consumers expecting a better general economic situation in the next 12 months increased compared with the previous month.

The financial situation expectation of household index rose 9.3% on a monthly basis to 79.2 in May, suggesting that more people were expecting a better financial situation in the upcoming year.

The number of people unemployed expectation index, a gauge of sentiment about the health of the labor market, climbed 2.9%, hitting 55.3 this month.

Consumers' assessments and expectations in nearly 20 economic and financial categories are measured in monthly tendency surveys.

The consumer confidence index calculated from the survey results is evaluated within a range of 0-200, indicating an optimistic outlook when the index is above 100 and a pessimistic one when it is below.