Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 11:49
The country's 200 000-odd Tupperware agents are angry about the counterfeit products being sold as the real McCoy.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
Johannesburg - February's retail sales growth figure surprised on the upside, coming in at a real rate of 2.5% year-on-year from January's 0.7%.
Economists said the figures showed some resilience on the part of consumers in a difficult environment.
Though there was a year-on-year rise in February, the figures show a huge slowdown in growth from the dizzying heights retail sales reached at the peak of the retail boom.
Statistics SA said real retail sales for the three months up to February 2008 showed an increase of 0.7% compared with the three months up to February 2007.
This is a far cry from the 8% increase between the quarter up to February 2007 compared with the three months up to February 2006.
For the first two months of this year compared with the same period last year, the increase was 1.6%. For the year as a whole in 2007, retail sales came in at 5.1% after rising a stellar 9.6% in 2006.
Econometrix economist George Glynos said the figures showed some resilience in the economy. "Those people shouting doom and gloom because of this latest interest rate increase and the possibility of more rate hikes to come should look at this data."
However, he cautioned against reading too much into one month's data and said that the sector was under pressure.
Nedbank economist Nicky Weimar said the figures were a surprise bounce-back but they were still way off the numbers seen in the "good old days of the consumer boom. We weren't forecasting a recession in the sector, and these numbers are in line with the sharp slowdown in growth that we are predicting.
"The numbers are likely to remain sluggish in the 1%-2% range in future. But if there are further interest rate increases, we could see the sector falling into recession by year-end," she said.
Absa economist Monale Ratsoma pointed out that the discretionary components of retail sales were responding to interest rate increases. The category furniture and appliances had fallen in current rands for the last nine months. "The improvement in February's retail sales figures shouldn't be seen as a sign that consumers aren't responding to interest rate hikes," he said.
- Fin24.com