Retail Trade - March 2006

In March, seasonally adjusted sales in ‘retail trade except of motor vehicles and motorcycles’ increased by 0.5% month-on-month at constant prices. Not seasonally adjusted sales grew by 6.8%. The biggest contribution to this growth had specialised stores with household goods and other retail trade in specialised stores and retail trade in non-specialised stores with food, beverages or tobacco predominating. The sale of non-food goods recorded the highest growth since August 2005.
In March, seasonally adjusted retail sales (CZ-NACE 52) grew by 0.5% month-on-month at constant prices. The trend component increased by 0.5%, which is the growth that, with the exception of January, has been lasting since April 2005 (Table 1).

Graph 1
Seasonally adjusted (SA) and working days adjusted (WDA) sales increased by 7.0% year-on-year at constant prices, not seasonally adjusted sales grew by 6.8 %. The sale of food, beverages and tobacco increased by 3.9% and the sale of non-food goods by 9.1%, which was the highest growth since August 2005. Under a higher number of working days in March 2006 (+1) the year-on-year development of seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted sales was partly affected by the fact that last year’s Easter shopping was realized at the end of March, this year’s only in April. The influence of Easter shopping plays a greater role after adjusting the time series than the influence of one extra working day.

The biggest contribution to the total growth had 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 non-specialised stores with food beverages or tobacco predominating. The fastest growing sales were in stores with clothing, textiles and footwear and in specialised stores with electrical household appliances, hardware, furniture and other household goods (Table 3). A drop was again recorded in the sale of pharmaceutical and medical goods, cosmetic and toilet articles.

In the classification according to size groups of enterprises the biggest sale growth occurred in enterprises with 50 to 99 employees and with 100 and more employees (+10.2% and +9.4%, respectively). Enterprises in other size groups reported a growth from 3.6% to 4.1%.

The price deflator for retail sales compared to the corresponding period of previous year reached 98.7. The biggest drop in prices was recorded in specialised stores with textiles, clothing and footwear (-5.7%), higher than in the corresponding period of the previous year were prices in stores with pharmaceutical and medical goods, cosmetic and toilet articles.

In March, according to data presented by Eurostat, seasonally adjusted constant price retail sales in the EU25 were 0.3% down month-on-month and 0.7% up year-on-year (working days adjusted). Among member states for which data were available, year-on-year increases in sales were observed in Latvia (+16.8%), Estonia (+12.6%), Lithuania (+10.6%), Slovakia (+10.4%), Poland (+8.2%), Luxembourg (+7.6%), Finland (+5.9%), Sweden (+5.2%), Denmark (+4.2%), Cyprus (+2.6%), France (+1.6%), Spain and the United Kingdom (+1.2%). Decreases were reported for Belgium (-2.7%), Portugal (-2.4%), Germany (-2.2%) and Austria (+1.2%).
Not seasonally adjusted sales in the automotive segment (CZ-NACE 50) grew by 6.4% 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 10.9% while retail sale of automotive fuel decreased by 1.9%.

In retail trade incl. the automotive segment (CZ-NACE 52+50) , seasonally adjusted sales rose by 0.4% month-on-month and not seasonally adjusted sales by 6.7% year-on-year.

Analysis - Sales in retail trade in the 1st quarter of 2006

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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: 11 May 2006
End of data processing: 16 May 2006
The data for March 2006 are preliminary. Final data for all months of 2006 will be known in June 2007at the latest.
Monthly data since 1997 are available as time series ( /produkty/slu_cr ), on the basis of final processing data for all months of 2005 were updated.