Retail in Europe to be bit out of breath
17:04
Eurostat released data on April retail sales in the European Union. While the year-on-year growth (i.e. compared to April 2020) is high, it is worrying what is happening with consumption on a month-to-month basis. Year on year, retail sales in the EU grew by 22.4 percent. The average taking into account the euro area itself is even more impressive, at almost 24 percent. The problem is, this is an expected rebound. On a year-to-year basis, sales must have recorded a high increase, because the reference point was April last year when all of Europe was closed by lockdowns. Meanwhile, the decline amounted to as much as 3.1 percent on a monthly basis.
The biggest drops were felt by sellers in Slovenia (sales decreased by as much as 10.4 percent compared to March), Denmark (minus 8.6 percent), and France (a decrease by 6 percent). Against this background, for example, Portugal is doing great (month-on-month increase by 4.3 percent), Latvia (local sellers are 3.8 percent positive compared to March), and Lithuania (dynamics of 3.7 percent ).
Against this background, Poland fares worse than the EU average. According to Eurostat, retail sales in Poland fell by 4.2 percent compared to March.
According to Monika Kurtek, chief economist at Bank Pocztowy, this monthly decline was caused by trade restrictions related to the third wave of the pandemic. In addition, the date of Easter influenced it a lot. This year it was held at the beginning of April. As a result, we started our Easter shopping at the end of March.
