Retail Trade - January 2007

In January, seasonally adjusted sales in ‘retail trade except of motor vehicles and motorcycles’ decreased by 0.2% month-on-month at constant prices and increased by 5.4% year-on-year. Not seasonally adjusted sales grew by 7.1% year-on-year, in hotels and restaurants by 1.4%.
Seasonally adjusted retail sales (CZ-NACE 52) in January, following a twelve months m-o-m growth, dropped for the first time (compared to December by 0.2%) at constant prices, of which non-food goods increased by 0.5%, food, beverages and tobacco dropped by 1.2%. The growth of the trend component compared to the previous three months slightly decelerated to 0.4%. (Table 1).

Graph 1
Seasonally adjusted sales increased by 5.4% year-on-year at constant prices. In January, not seasonally adjusted sales grew by 7.1% (January 2006 and 2007 had the same number of working days), of which sales of non-food goods by 10.3% and sales of food, beverages and tobacco increased by 2.6%.

After Christmas sales could have been one of the reasons for the extraordinary high sales growth in all of the assortment types of groups of non-food goods. In January, specialised stores with non-food goods contributed the most to the total growth (approximately 77%), the biggest share in the growth of total sales had stores with electrical household appliances, hardware, furniture and other household goods (approximately 28%). The fastest sale growth occurred in stores with textiles, clothing and footwear and in stores with household goods. Following a drop, which lasted almost the whole last year, in January sale of pharmaceutical and medical goods, cosmetic and toilet articles increased by 11%, which could have been caused also by a delayed influenza epidemic (Table 3).

Broken down by size group of enterprises, the biggest sale growth occurred in enterprises with 50 to 99 employees respectively with 20 to 49 employees (+18.1% and +11.9%, respectively). Enterprises with 100+ employees reported a growth of 7.7% and with 0 to 19 employees a growth of 4.7%.

The total deflator (compared to the corresponding period of previous year) was 99.7%. Prices dropped the most in specialised stores with textiles, clothing and footwear (-3.8%), second-hand goods (-3.3%) and other non-food goods (-2.9%). On the contrary, higher than in the corresponding period of previous year were prices in stores with food, beverages and tobacco, in both specialised and non-specialised (+2.4%, +1.7%, respectively) and in stores with pharmaceutical and medical goods, cosmetic and toilet articles (+1.9%).

In January, according to data released by Eurostat, seasonally adjusted constant price retail sales in the EU27 were down by 0.9% month-on-month and up by 1.4% year-on-year (working days adjusted). Among member states for which data were available, sales increased year-on-year in Latvia (+30.5%), Estonia (+19.7%), Bulgaria (+18.2%), Lithuania (+12.3%), Poland (+10.0%), Sweden (+9.2%), Spain (+4.1%), Belgium (+3.4%), the United Kingdom (+3.0%), Finland (+2.7%), Luxembourg (+1.7%), France and Austria (identically +1.3%). Prices dropped in Germany (-4.3%), Portugal (-1.3%) and Denmark (-0.8%).
In the automotive segment (CZ-NACE 50) not seasonally adjusted sales increased by 9.3% year-on-year at constant prices; sale, maintenance and repair of motor vehicles increased by 12.4% and sale of automotive fuel by 4.7%.

In retail trade incl. the automotive segment (CZ-NACE 52+50), seasonally adjusted sales at constant prices increased by 0.7% month-on-month and not seasonally adjusted sales by 7.7% year-on-year.

In hotels and restaurants (CZ-NACE 55) not seasonally adjusted sales increased year-on-year by 1.4% at constant prices; this increase was contributed to by particularly the growth of sales in restaurants, bars and canteens by 1.9%. Sales in hotels decreased by 0.1%. Based on the statistical data it follows that the untipicaly warm weather in Jaunuary affected the drop of sales in several accommodation establishments in mountain centres, while on the other hand this development was partly compensated by an increased sales growth in establishments providing accommodation in city or spa tourism centres.

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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. (+420) 274052921, e-mail: alena.hellerova@csu.gov.cz
Data source: CZSO direct survey in enterprises
End of data collection: 12 March 2007
End of data processing: 13 March 2007
The data for January 2007 are preliminary, final data for all months of 2007 will be known in June 2008 at the latest.
Monthly data since 1997 are available as time series ( /slu_ts