German Retail Sales Post Biggest Annual Drop in Modern Times as Inflation Hits
2022.08.01 09:46
By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com — German retail sales suffered their sharpest annual fall in decades in June as rampant inflation ate into consumers’ spending power.
Adjusted for inflation and seasonal effects, sales fell by 8.8% from a year earlier, while in month-on-month terms, they fell 1.6%, statistics office Destatis said on Monday. The annual drop was the largest since Destatis started compiling pan-German retail sales data in 1994.
Both figures were well below analysts’ expectations and reflect the impact of the growing energy crisis on Europe’s largest economy.
Unadjusted for inflation, prices fell 0.5% on the month and 0.8% on the year.
The figures make it likelier that the German economy contracted in the second quarter due to the ongoing strains of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the U.S. and European sanctions that followed it.
