Retail sales plunged in April, led by motors
Thursday June 18 2009
Retail sales dropped 17 percent in April, led by plunging car sales and falling demand for furniture, electrical goods and clothes.
The annual decline followed a drop of 17.7 percent in March, the Central Statistics Office said on its website today. When car sales are excluded, sales fell 7.1 percent in April from a year earlier and rose 0.5 percent from March, the first monthly increase since November.
Soaring unemployment and higher taxes have undermined consumer confidence in Ireland, keeping spending in check as the country faces the worst recession in its history. Separate figures today showed that car sales plunged 60 percent in May from a year earlier.
While the sign of “stabilization is encouraging, we remain cautious on the overall outlook,” said Deirdre Ryan, an economist at Goodbody Stockbrokers in Dublin, who expects household expenditure to fall 9 percent this year. “The impacts of the income-tax changes from the April Budget are as yet unknown, while unemployment remains on an upward trajectory.”
Furniture sales fell 38 percent from a year earlier, clothes sales declined 10 percent and sales at bars fell by 12 percent, today’s report showed.
An index of consumer confidence fell to 45.5 in May from 48.6 in April, according to a monthly report published on June 2. The gauge, which started in 1996, has a historical average reading of 96. (Bloomberg)
- Louisa Nesbitt
