Confidence in Turkey’s economy recovered strongly in September, despite economic and political challenges, data from statistics office TUIK showed on September 29.

The economic confidence index jumped 21% m/m to 87.8 points in September, swinging from a 24.1% m/m decline in August, when sentiment worsened in the wake of the failed July 15 coup attempt. The improvement in September was driven by a recovery in the real sector confidence that rose 4% m/m in September, versus 3.1% m/m decline in the previous month.

Confidence in the services and construction sectors were up 5.7% m/m and 3.2% m/m, respectively, but business sentiment in the retail industry continued to decline, falling for the second month in a row.

TUIK also reported that consumer confidence, one of the major components of the headline economic sentiment index, fell 0.2% m/m in September. That followed a 11% m/m increase in August.

TUIK’s monthly economic sentiment survey was carried out before Moody’s downgrade that sent Turkey’s rating into junk. However, Turkey’s markets are weathering the fall-out from the rating move. The volatility, triggered by the rating cut, was short-lived. Stocks recovered and the lira reversed some of its earlier losses.

The main stock exchange index, BIST-100, opened 0.03% higher but the lira weakened 0.03% to trade at 2.9880 per dollar as of 10:15am local time.

Senior government officials have lashed out at Moody’s for poor judgment, arguing that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong, even though they admit that the government’s 4.5% GDP growth target for 2016 will likely be missed. The government announced a set of measures to boost economy activity that showed signs of further weakening in the wake of the coup attempt.