Euro zone retail sales go up firmly in November

In November, euro zone sales managed to inch up more than anticipated for a second month in a row because customers purchased more clothes as well as electrical goods. That’s what follows from official data uncovered on Monday. Undoubtedly, it’s an upbeat sign for the EU’s surge in the last quarter.

Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, revealed that retail sales in the trading bloc tacked on by 0.6% month-on-month, which is much more than the 0.1% leap estimate by market experts surveyed by Reuters.

Retail trade soared by 1.1% on the year.

In addition to this, Eurostat also updated October data upwards to a 0.6% month-on-month leap from a previous 0.3% outcome and also to a 2.3% jump year-on-year versus a previous 1.7% ascend.

The better-than anticipated figures, although extremely volatile and prone to frequent revisions, appear to be upbeat news for the euro zone economy and could indicate stronger surge for the last quarter of the year.

In the third quarter, the EU’s economy managed to ascend by just 0.2% percent, speeding down from a 0.4% GDP leap in the second quarter. By the way, before retail figures were published, the downbeat mood among euro zone purchasing managers in December uncovered on Friday had pushed some financial analysts to forecast that surge in the last quarter of 2019 would be slow too.

November retail trade was powered generally by customers’ appetite for footwear and clothes, whose sales headed north in volume by about 2.7% on the month. Additinally, purchases of electrical goods, including TVs, surged by 1.5% month-on-month.

The higher retail trade figures were also provoked by more intense sales of medicines that leapt by 1.3% on the month. Besides this, sales of auto fuel as well as online goods went up too.