German retail sales fell unexpectedly in December, seasonally corrected data released today by the national statistics office showed as the biggest European economy remained gripped by recession.
On a monthly basis, German retail sales lost 0.2%, well below analysts forecast that had pointed to an increase of 0.5%. On a 12-month basis, retail sales lost 0.3% in December, the Destatis statistics service said.
And for all of 2008, they were 0.4% lower than in 2007, when they had plunged by 2.3% owing to an increase in the country's value added tax.
The German GfK research institute yesterday said that consumer spending should resist the effects of rising unemployment this year but warned that the global economic slump would affect consumption in 2010.
Destatis noted today that retail sales figures, which are based on data from seven German states that account for about 76% of all sales, are often revised later. The numbers do not include sales of cars or sales at petrol stations.
Consumption is traditionally the weakest link in Germany's export-oriented economy, and officials regularly seek to boost consumer spending, especially since exports have been curbed by slowdowns or recessions in major global economies.
The German economy ministry has said that economic activity might contract by up to 3% this year, and the country is already in recession after the economy shrank in the last three quarters of 2008.
Last week, the German labour office said unemployment had jumped by 387,000 to just under 3.5 million people in January. Those figures showed that 8.3% of the German workforce was out of work in January, up from 7.4% in December.
