British retail sales shot up in January at four times the rate predicted by analysts as consumers snapped up cheap electrical goods and stocked up for an early Easter, in a sign that consumer demand is holding up.
The Office for National Statistics said today that sales rose 0.8% last month, recovering from a 0.2% fall in December and putting them up 5.6% on the year.
The rise was driven by a 0.7% monthly jump in food stores sales, helped by Easter's falling in March this year.
Sales at household good stores leapt 4.3% on the month and by 14.8% on the year - the biggest annual rise since October 2001. This was undoubtedly because of heavy discounting in the New Year sales.
Prices of electrical goods, for example, were 14.9% lower than a year ago - the sharpest cost-cutting since records began more than a decade ago.
The figures fly in the face of fears that consumers are retrenching in the face of a global credit crunch and worries about the future of the economy in Britain. As such, they are likely to boost expectations that the Bank of England will wait before cutting interest rates again, having cut them twice since December to 5.25% to help bolster the economy.
Internet retailing continued to soar. Non-store retailing and repair sales rose a record 22.1% on a year ago.
