Eurozone retail sales unchanged in October, missing forecasts

(Sharecast News) - Retail sales across the eurozone were unchanged in October, missing expectations of a slight increase, having moved more or less sideways over the past four months. The volume of retail trade across the single-currency region was flat in October, according to Eurostat on Thursday. That followed a 0.1% increase in September, no change in August and a 0.1% decline in July.

The consensus forecast was for another 0.1% monthly increase.

Food, drink and tobacco sales rose by 0.3% compared with the month before, while automotive fuel sales gained 0.3%, though that was fully offset by a 0.2% slip in non-food product sales.

Among eurozone member states for which data was available, the highest monthly increases in sales were recorded in Luxembourg (+3.6%), Estonia (+1.7%) and Croatia (+1.4%), while the biggest falls were seen in Belgium (-1.3%), Austria (-0.6%) and Ireland (-0.4%).

Compared with last October, sales growth across the entire region came in at 1.5%, up from a 12-month low of 1.2% in September.