Galery

1

Retailers will breathe a sigh of relief after the difficult and dramatic summer. The ten-day sales will begin tomorrow and will continue until 10 November. The retail sector reported big losses because of capital controls on banks and because of the increasing taxes on consumers.

Tomorrow, 1 November, shops will be open from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm. Retailers consider a good sign the fact that the first day of the sales is on Sunday and hope that it will be a good start for the remaining days.

Turnover of retail sales continued to decline in August too, which was the second month of capital controls. According to the figures that the Greek statistical service ELSTAT announced yesterday, the seasonal turnover index decreased by 4.6% compared with August 2014. Compared with July 2015, it increased by 3.9%, mainly due to the sales during the whole of August. The seasonal index of the volume of goods sold in August 2015 decreased by 2.7% compared with the same month of 2014.

The composition of seasonal indexes takes into account the impact of monthly events (holidays, tourist periods, etc.).

With the exception of the clothing and footwear sectors as well as of books and stationery products, all other categories of shops reported a decrease in turnover. Furniture shops and those selling appliances and household equipment suffered the biggest losses, as their turnover declined by 15.8% on an annual basis and the volume of trade by 9.2%, followed by petrol stations, mainly because of lower prices. The turnover of this category shrank by 13.4% in August compared to the same period last year whereas sales volume decreased by 3.1%.

The opposite trend was observed in supermarkets. Their turnover decreased by 2.5% whereas the decrease in sales volume was greater, 3.3%, due to the increased VAT on many products from 13% to 23%. Similar was the situation of independent grocery shops, whose turnover shrank by 3.6% and sales volume by 4.8%.

Turnover of pharmacies decreased by 6.1% and their sales volume by 2.5%. Shopping centres reported a small decrease in turnover and sales volume, 2% and 0.2% respectively.

Clothes and shoe shops were the big winners in August. Their annual turnover increased by 8.8% and the volume of sales by 11.3%. Bookshops and stationery goods also reported an increase in turnover of 8% and in sales volume of 9.7%.