Seasonally adjusted retail trade sales decreased by 11.2% in July 2021 when compared with June 2021 according to StatsSA.
This followed month-on-month changes of 0.7% in June 2021 and 2.3% in May 2021. In the three months ended July 2021, seasonally adjusted retail trade sales decreased by 2.9% compared with the previous three months.
Measured in real terms (constant 2015 prices), retail trade sales decreased by 0.8% year-on-year in July with the largest negative annual growth rates recorded in the ‘household furniture, appliances and equipment’ (-10.2%), ‘hardware, paint, and glass’ (-6.2%) and ‘food, beverages, and tobacco products in specialised stores’ (-4.1%) categories with the main negative category to this decrease being ‘general dealers’, contributing -1.1 percentage points.
However, retail trade sales increased by 8.4% in the three months ended July 2021 compared with the three months ended July 2020. The main contributors to this increase were all ‘other retailers’ (31.9% and contributing 2.6 percentage points), ‘general dealers’ (4.4% and contributing 2.0 percentage points) and ‘retailers in textiles, clothing, footwear, and leather goods’ (10.7% and contributing 1.8 percentage points).
