UK retailers suffer fall in sales of 0.1 percent in lead-up to Christmas.
The Guardian reports that retailers in the UK suffered a seasonally adjusted drop in sales of 0.1 percent in December, following a “flat” November, indicating the difficult trading conditions currently faced by the retail sector.
Furthermore, high street and online spending during the three months up to December also showed a fall in sales of 0.6 percent, with a fall in petrol prices preventing the figure to be even greater.
However, the Office of National Statistics reportedly said that “online shopping made up an increasing share of retail sales, with more than 10 percent of the total” being generated by consumers using the internet to buy goods, “an increase of 1.2 percentage points on December 2011”.
Commenting on the poor retail sales figures for the period, Vicky Redwood, UK analyst at Capital Economics, said: “December’s drop in the official measure of UK retail sales volumes confirms that the festive period was fairly lacklustre for the high street. The 0.1 percent monthly fall was a bit worse than the consensus forecast of a 0.2 percent rise and left sales barely higher than a year ago. Sales in the fourth quarter as a whole were down by 0.6 percent – yet another bit of evidence that the economy probably contracted at the end of last year.”
The news comes after a number of significant retailers were recently announced to be in administration, including camera retailer Jessops, entertainment chain HMV and DVD rental company Blockbuster; with Jeremy Cook, Chief Economist at World First, commenting: “With the number of big high street names heading into administration in the past few weeks, we already knew that this Christmas was not a kind one for the retail industry. Food and energy price inflation have hammered consumers’ pockets and, apart from December 2010 (a very snowy month), this annual increase of 1.1 percent was the weakest since 1998.”