Tesco stems sales decline

London - Sales at Britain's Tesco , the market leading grocer reeling from an accountancy scandal, fell 3.6% over the last 12 weeks, industry data showed on Tuesday.

The data from market researcher Kantar Worldpanel put Tesco's market share at 28.8% for the 12 weeks to October 12, down from 30.1% in the same period last year.

The outcome for Tesco is an improvement on the 4.5% sales fall Kantar reported last month.

Kantar said Britain's overall grocery market saw growth of 0.7% over the latest 12 week period.

Like-for-like prices fell 0.2%, pushing the grocery market into deflation, Kantar said.

Tesco is due to publish interim results and an update on its probe into a $404m profit mis-statement on Thursday.