Turkish Shares Flat At Close

Turkey's benchmark index closed Thursday with a 44.98-point fall to reach 89,764.11 points.



The BIST 100 index was down by 0.05 percent with a total trading volume of 3.4 billion Turkish liras (or approximately $938.5 million).



On the fourth day of the week, the banking sector index dropped by 0.68 percent while the holding sector rose by 0.67 percent.



Among all sector indexes, the tourism sector was the top performer -- up 2.51 percent -- while the mining index was the worst-performing sector, falling 2.66 percent.



The top five heavily traded stocks were private lender Garanti, national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, another private lender Akbank followed by state lender Halkbank plus major cement producer Afyon Cimento.



Shares of another cement maker Goltas Cimento (GOLTS) saw the largest increase with a 10.43 percent rise while the stocks of Park Elektrik (PRKME) -- in the energy and mining sectors -- suffered the biggest drop of the day, down 4.08 percent.



The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate hovered around 3.62. A dollar was worth 3.6230 liras as of 5.00 p.m. (1400GMT) Thursday, compared with 3.6240 at Wednesday's close.



The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index rose 2.13 percent while the price of gold per kilogram increased to 145,292 Turkish liras (some $40,105) as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT), compared with 145,250 Turkish liras (some $39,966) at Wednesday's close.



Turkey's consumer confidence index rose from 65.7 points in February to 67.8 points in March, up 2.1 points or 3.2 percent, according to a Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) report released Thursday.



On Thursday the institute also revealed that the unemployment rate for 2016 was at 10.9 percent, up from 10.3 percent in 2015 -- an increase of 273,000.



The numbers of jobless workers in Turkey rose 0.6 percentage points in 2016 to 3.33 million, according to the statistical institute. -