Retail Trade - February 2006

In February, seasonally adjusted sales in ‘retail trade except of motor vehicles and motorcycles’ increased by 0.6% month-on-month at constant prices. Not seasonally adjusted sales grew by 7.8%, which was the biggest growth since May 2000. The biggest contribution to this growth had retail trade in non-specialised stores (mainly chain stores) and specialised stores with household goods.
In February, seasonally adjusted retail sales (CZ-NACE 52) grew by 0.6% month-on-month at constant prices. The growth of the trend component of approximately 0.4% has been lasting already eleven months (Table 1).

Graph 1

Seasonally adjusted sales grew by 6.6% year-on-year at constant prices under the same number of working days in February 2005 and 2006. Not seasonally adjusted sales grew by 7.8%, which was the biggest growth since May 2000, of which the sale of non-food goods increased by 8.1% and the sale of food, beverages and tobacco by 7.5%.

The biggest contribution to the total growth had both types of non-specialised stores (stores with food beverages or tobacco predominating and stores with non-food goods predominating) and further specialised stores with electrical household appliances, hardware, furniture and other household goods, specialised stores with other non-food goods (mainly sale of books, newspapers and stationery and other retail sale in specialized stores) and stores with clothing, textiles and footwear. The fastest growing sales were in non-specialised stores with non-food goods predominating, in stores with clothing, textiles and footwear (Table 3) and in sale via mail order houses, which is in terms of volume insignificant (+15.0%). A drop was recorded in the sale of pharmaceutical and medical goods, cosmetic and toilet articles, which could have been affected by the fact that there was no influenza epidemic this year. Also the retail sale of food, beverages and tobacco in specialised stores decreased.

In the classification according to size groups of enterprises the biggest sale growth occurred in enterprises with 100 and more employees and 50 to 99 employees (+12.3% and +9.3% respectively). Enterprises in other size groups reported a growth from 3.1% to 4.3%.

The price deflator for retail sales compared to the corresponding period of previous year in total decreased (- 1.2%) in all assortment types of stores with the exception of stores with pharmaceutical and medical goods, cosmetic and toilet articles. The biggest drop was recorded in specialised stores with textiles, clothing and footwear (-5.8%).


In February, according to data presented by Eurostat, seasonally adjusted constant price retail sales in the EU25 were 0.1% up month-on-month and 1.8% year-on-year (working days adjusted). Among member states for which data were available, year-on-year increases in sales were observed in Latvia (+15.1%), Estonia (+12.0%), Luxembourg (+9.1%), Lithuania (+7.9%), Sweden (+7.8%), Slovakia (+6.8%), Poland (+6.7%), Denmark (+5.6%), Finland (+4.1%), Portugal (+2.9%), Austria (+2.5%), the United Kingdom (+1.9%), France (+1.7%), Germany (+1.2%) and Spain (+0.1%). Decreases were reported for Belgium (-5.1%).
Not seasonally adjusted sales in the automotive segment (CZ-NACE 50) grew by 8.5% year-on-year at constant prices. Sales from the sale of motor vehicles, motorcycles and accessories and maintenance and repair of motor vehicles grew by 13.5% and 7.9% respectively; retail sale of automotive fuel increased by +2.9%.

In retail trade incl. the automotive segment (CZ-NACE 52+50) , seasonally adjusted sales remained the same month-on-month at constant prices and not seasonally adjusted sales rose by 8.0% year-on-year.

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Note
1) The whole time series is seasonally adjusted every month, indices in the graph are changed retroactively.

Contact: Alena Hellerová, tel. 274052921, e-mail: alena.hellerova@csu.gov.cz
Data source: CZSO direct survey in enterprises
End of data collection: 5 April 2006
End of data processing: 11 April 2006
The data for February 2006 are preliminary. Final data for all months of 2006 will be known in June 2007.
Monthly data since 1997 are available as time series ( /produkty/slu_cr ).