European retail sales cool off after a solid start to the year
RETAILERS in the Eurozone saw sales drop 0.6 per cent in June, according to figures released by Eurostat yesterday.
The numbers take the volume of retail sales to just 1.2 per cent above what they were in June 2014.
The drop comes after robust growth in sales over most of the first half of this year.
The monthly contraction was led by Germany where retail sales declined by 2.3 per cent. Sales also dropped 0.4 per cent in Spain while staying relatively flat in France at 0.1 per cent.“Combined with the 0.1 per cent downward revision in May, this was about as poor as we had expected, but it is encouraging to note that non-food sales fell ‘only’ 0.2 per cent month-to-month, with sales of food, alcohol and tobacco down 0.8 per cent,” said Claus Vistesen from Pantheon Macroeconomics. He added that the figures over recent months were consistent with a decent trend in consumer spending.