Sectoral Confidence in Turkey Largely Flat in Dec.

Confidence in Turkey’s retail trade and construction sectors advanced slightly in December while the services sector slipped, the Turkish Statistical Institute announced Monday.

The retail trade confidence index was 96.1 points in the month, up only 0.1% from previous month as managers in the sector saw business activity-sales and current volume of stock substantially unchanged, Anadolu Agency reported.

Turkey’s construction sector confidence index also saw a slight increase of 0.5% to 76.1 points from 75.7 in November due to sentiment from sector leaders who expect total employment over the next three months to advance, despite overall orders decreasing.

The services sector was the only one which slipped in December, declining by 3.5% to 93.35 as fewer sector managers expected an improvement in the business situation and demand turnover compared to previous months.

Meanwhile, the Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development announced that low growth rates in developed countries and high growth rates in the emerging world have resulted in a shift in the income categorization of countries.

The organization classified mid-income countries, including China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey, as high income countries, which were not classified as high income in 1995 but have since experienced a high, sustained growth trend.

According to the report, a country is said to have experienced a period of high, sustained growth based on four conditions between 1980 and 2011. These conditions include a period of rapid growth, more than 3.5% per annum for at least six years and accelerated growth. In the latest “2017 Perspectives on Global Development” report by the OECD, which presents an overview of the shifting of economic activity to developing countries and examines whether this shift has led to an increase in international migration toward developing countries, Turkey is listed among the “High and Sustained Growth” countries.

The report draws attention to the expenses Turkey paid for Syrian refugees, which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed to be around $20 billion since the beginning of the migration flow to Turkey during a speech on Saturday.

Based on the latest data released by TurkStat, GDP calculation methods have been changed and in line with the recent changes, Turkey’s growth rate, which was 4.7% since 2003, has also been revised as 5.9%.

Accordingly, Turkey’s national income is ranked third among the countries with national incomes over $100 billion in this period, in terms of growth rate, between 2010 and 2015, following Qatar and China.