Retail trade sales fall 4%

Pretoria - Retail trade sales in December last year fell by 3.7 percent, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Wednesday.

The decline was lesser than what economists had predicted. Consensus was that sales would fall by 5.6 percent year-on-year.

Nedbank said that it had expected sales to remain weak in December.

It predicted that sales would drop by 7.8 percent year-on-year, while Standard Bank had predicted sales would fall by 6 percent year-on-year.

Overall retail sales in 2009 at constant (2008) prices fell by 4.9 percent compared to 2008.

In November 2009, retail trade sales fell by 6.6 percent year-on-year.