Retailers in Germany have had a surprisingly strong July, indicating that household confidence may be growing. It continues the previous month’s upward trend compared to 2014.
Germany’s retailers have had a surprisingly strong July, suggesting consumer confidence is on the rise, the national statistics office said Monday.
Retail sales rose 1.4 percent in real terms and 1.3 percent in nominal terms compared to June, outperforming forecasts of a 1.3-percent real rise, the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) said. This was the strongest growth in 10 months in the EU’s largest market.
The year-on-year boost was even stronger, with retail sales up 3.3 percent in real terms and 3.1 percent nominal over July 2014, with particularly strong gains in areas including textiles and food. Both months had 27 retailing days.
Compared with the previous year, turnover in retail trade in the first seven months of 2015 in real terms was 2.6 percent and nominal 2.5 percent larger than in the corresponding period of the previous year.
July’s improvement over 2014 continued the previous month’s trend. In June, real growth was 5.1 percent compared to a year earlier – however, June 2014 had two fewer days of sales. June sales had nevertheless been 2.3 percent lower in both real and nominal terms than those in May.
sgb/hg (AFP, Reuters)
