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Frankfurt / AFP
German retail sales, a closely watched measure of household confidence, rose in January, suggesting consumer sentiment in Europe’s top economy remains robust, official data showed on Monday.
Retailers’ sales expanded by 0.7 percent in January compared with December, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement.
The previous month, retail sales had risen by 0.6 percent.
On a 12-month basis, however, business decreased, falling by 0.8 percent in January, compared with the same month last year, the statisticians calculated.
But that was because January 2016 had one fewer shopping day than January 2015, they noted.
Last week, a leading consumer sentiment survey, conducted by the GfK market research institute, found that consumer confidence is on the rise, shrugging off terror warnings and economic uncertainties regarding the massive influx of refugees.
According to Euromonitor International, despite the continued euro crisis, geopolitical tensions and wars in Eastern Ukraine and the Middle East, the refugee crisis, as well as the stock exchange crisis in China, retailing in Germany continued to show healthy value growth in 2015. This was very much driven by low unemployment and rising annual disposable incomes. The most dynamic channel continued to be internet retailing.
Within internet retailing, mobile internet retailing saw further growth in popularity, providing a boost to sales. Store-based retailing also proved to be resilient and stable, with modern grocery retailers and non-grocery specialists both demonstrating healthy value growth.