Retail Trade - July 2007

In July, seasonally adjusted sales in ‘retail trade except of motor vehicles and motorcycles’ increased by 0.6% month-on-month at constant prices. The year-on-year increase was 7.4%, the same rate had also not seasonally adjusted sales. The growth of sales of non-food goods accelerated to 10.5%, food, beverages and tobacco slowed down to 3.3%. Seasonally adjusted sales in hotels and restaurants increased by 0.2% month-on-month in July, not seasonally adjusted sales decreased by 1.1% year-on-year.
Seasonally adjusted sales in retail trade (CZ-NACE 52) increased by 0.6% month-on-month at constant prices in July, of which food, beverages and tobacco by 0.8%, non-food goods by 0.6%. The growth of the trend component by 0.5% remained stable since April 2007, however compared to the last twelve months it was by 0.1 p.p. lower (Table 1).


Graph 1

Year-on-year, after seasonal and working day adjustments (one working day more in July 2007), sales in retail trade increased by 7.4% at constant prices, after working days adjustments by 7.3%. The growth of not seasonally adjusted sales, compared to the last two months, accelerated to 7.4%, of which non-food goods by 10.5% and food, beverages and tobacco on the contrary decelerated to 3.3%.

The biggest contribution to the growth in July had specialised stores with other non-food goods and stores with electronics, electrical appliances, construction materials, furniture and other household goods. The fastest sale growth occurred in, in terms of share little significant retail sale via Internet or mail order houses. The second fastest growth was recorded in stores with textiles, clothing and footwear and stores with electronics, electrical appliances, construction materials, furniture and other household goods. (Table 3)

Broken down by size group of enterprises, the biggest growth of sales occurred in enterprises with 50 to 99 employees (+16.0%). Enterprises with 20 to 49 employees reported a growth of 11.6%, with 100+ employees by 7.4% and with 0 to 19 employees by 6.1%.

The price deflator (related to the corresponding period of the previous year) was 101.5%. Prices were up in stores with food, beverages and tobacco, in both specialised and non-specialised (+5.3% and +4.4%, respectively), in stores with pharmaceutical and medical goods, cosmetic and toilet articles (+1.8%), in non-specialised stores with non-food goods predominating (+1.2%) and in retail sale not in stores (+0.8%). Prices dropped the most in stores with other non-food goods (-2.2%), which have a significant share in total sales, in sale via mail order houses (-1.2%), in stores with second-hand goods (-1.0%), in stores with household goods (-0.6%) and stores with textiles, clothing and footwear (-0.2%).

In July 2007, according to data released by Eurostat, seasonally adjusted constant price retail sales in the EU27 increased by 0.1% month-on-month and by 2.2% year-on-year (working days adjusted). Among member states for which data were available, year-on-year sale increases were recorded in Latvia (+24.0%), Poland (+12.5%), Lithuania (+10.8%), Estonia (+10.5%), Sweden (+9.5%), Slovakia (+6.0%), Bulgaria (+5.8%), Finland (+5.2%), the United Kingdom (+4.2%), Luxembourg (+4.0%), Denmark and Spain (+3.1%), Austria (+0.2%). Prices dropped in Belgium (-5.2%), Germany (-1.6%), Portugal (-0.9%) and Slovenia (-0.3%).
In the automotive segment (CZ-NACE 50), not seasonally adjusted sales rose by 12.0% year-on-year at constant prices; sale, maintenance and repair of motor vehicles increased by 15.2% and sale of automotive fuel by 7.7%. Vehicles sold well regardless their size, high sale growth of automotive fuel was recorded particularly by big enterprises.

In retail trade incl. the automotive segment (CZ-NACE 52 + 50), seasonally adjusted sales at constant prices increased by 0.4% month-on-month and not seasonally adjusted sales grew by 8.9% year-on-year.

In hotels and restaurants (CZ-NACE 55) seasonally adjusted sales increased in July by 0.2% however not seasonally adjusted sales dropped for the first time this year (-1.1%) year-on-year. The drop was influenced by the development in restaurants, bars and canteens where sales were 1.7% lower than last year, particularly in restaurants, saloons and bars of smaller entrepreneurs with less than 20 employees. One of the reasons was also the high comparable base. The sale growth continued in big catering chains and also providers of common meal services regardless their size. Hotels and camping sites recorded only a slight increase of their sales (+0.1%), hotels and similar establishments with more than 20 employees recorded a sale increase, on the contrary in other establishments with less than 50 employees they dropped markedly.

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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: 5 September 2007
End of data processing: 10 September 2007
The data for July 2007 are preliminary; final data for all months of 2007 will be available in June 2008 at the latest. Monthly data since 1997 are available in time series ( /sales_indices_monthly_retail_trade_hotels_and_restaurants_time_series )