However, many businesses – including food retailers – will be wary of the inevitable impact on prices further down the line. The falling pound has in no doubt benefitted retailers in the short-term, with more Brits staying at home this summer and potentially spending their increase in real-term wages on fashion and home improvement. Food stores were also flat on the month after a small growth of 0.1% reported in June 2019.Ĭommenting on the results, Philipp Gutzwiller, head of retail at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, says: “The retail sector continues to defy expectations and show further growth on the back of a generally positive first half of the year. This is compared with a strong growth of 3.6% in July 2018. In contrast, despite its large weight of 38.5%, food stores reported a fall on the year at negative 0.5%, the biggest decline since March 2018. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there were a range of promotions in July 2019 from non-store retailers, which boosted sales. The month-on-month growth of 6.9% is the largest growth since 9.2% in May 2016. Non-store retailing has a weight of 10.3% to total retail and, with strong year-on-year and month-on-month growth rates, has contributed the most to the overall growth in July 2019. The three-month on three-month growth rate shows that in recent months sales have continued to grow for both the amount spent and the quantity bought, from September 2018 to July 2019. This, believes the ONS, shows that the general long-term trend is one of growth.
So finds the latest quarterly figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which also reported that year-on-year growth in the quantity bought increased by 3.3% in July 2019, with food stores being the only main sector reporting a fall at negative 0.5%. Food stores and fuel stores logged a decline.
It was also a good quarter for department stores, seeing growth for the first time this year with a month-on-month growth of 1.6% this was following six consecutive months of decline. In the three months to July 2019, the quantity bought in retail sales increased by 0.5% when compared with the previous three months, with online accounting for 19.9% of total retailing compared with 18.9% in June 2019, with an overall growth of 12.7% when compared with the same month a year earlier.
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