< /p> Customer with a shopping cart – illustration photo.
Prague – The Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ) will publish the results of the Czech retail trade for January today. In December, retailers' sales fell for the eighth consecutive month in a year-on-year comparison, but the decline slowed to 7.3 percent from November's revised 8.9 percent. For the whole of last year, retail sales decreased by 3.6 percent, having risen by 4.4 percent a year earlier.
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Sales for food decreased year-on-year by 5.1 percent and for non-food goods by 2.9 percent. According to the CZSO, traders earned 1.5 percent less for fuel than in 2021 and 4.2 percent less for the sale and repair of motor vehicles.
The decline in household consumption is the main cause of the Czech economy falling into a technical recession in the second half of the past year, said Akcenta.cz portal analyst Miroslav Novák. “Czech households ran into austerity regime last year, which was largely forced by extremely high inflation in sensitive items of the consumption basket,” he added.
According to Jakub Seidler, chief economist of the Czech Banking Association, retail sales will fall this year by roughly 1.5 percent.
