South Africa’s retail and wholesale trade sales have continued to dip with the decline in general dealers sales largely contributing to the strong deterioration in the market in July.
The Bureau for Economic Research (BER) noted in their Weekly Review of the local and global economy on Tuesday that domestic real retail sales fell by 1.8% year-on-year (y-o-y)in July, unchanged from June’s downwardly revised contraction.
“The biggest drag on the annual figure came from general dealers (-4.1%; shaving off 1.7% points) and retailers in hardware, paint and glass (-6.8%; shaving off 0.6% points),” the BER said.
“On a monthly basis, seasonally adjusted retail trade sales remained flat in July compared with a 0.3% month-on-month (m-o-m) increase in June,” BER economists said.
Wholesale trade sales also continued on a streak of declines as annual sales fell by 3.2% in July, down from an upwardly revised fall of 2.2% year-on-year (y-o-y) in June.
In contrast, on a monthly basis, wholesale trade sales (seasonally adjusted) increased by 1.4% in July. This was insufficient to correct for a contraction of 1.9% m-o-m in June,” the Bureau said.
However, fuel sales drove motor trade sales up by 2% y-o-y in July.
“Although a decent rise, this was down from an upwardly revised increase of 5.8% y-o-y in June.
The largest contributor to the annual figure was fuel sales, which increased by 7.7% y-o-y and contributed 2% to the overall annual increase. Real or seasonally adjusted motor trade sales fell by 0.4% m-o-m in July.
