According to Daily Sabah article published on February 27, 2023, economic confidence in Türkiye dropped slightly in February, official data showed Monday, following devastating earthquakes that jolted the country’s southeastern region.
The economic confidence index fell 0.3% month-over-month in February to 99.1 points, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said, following a 1.3% increase in January.
All sub-indexes posted a decline in the month except for consumer confidence.
The construction confidence index slipped 3.6% to 89.8 in the month.
The retail trade confidence index dropped 2.4% from January to 123.1 in February, while the services confidence index was down 2.2% to 115.5.
The index for the real sector-manufacturing industry-edged down by 1% to 102.4 this month.
On the other hand, the consumer confidence index hiked 4.3% on a monthly basis to 82.5 in February.
The index, which points to an optimistic outlook when above 100 and pessimistic when below, hit a record low in 2020 before recovering as coronavirus measures were eased.
The government introduced a series of measures to ease quakes’ fallout that are expected to cost at least $50 billion.
The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes struck on Feb. 6 and flattened a swathe of Türkiye’s southeastern region, destroying around 164,000 buildings that contained some 520,000 apartments.
Economists have predicted that the quakes, described as the worst disaster in Türkiye’s modern history, would shave some one to two percentage points off economic growth this year.
