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Analysis: Retail growth in 2018 will be ‘above average’

January 12, 2018

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Over the past week, the welter of holiday trading updates has hinted that retailers enjoyed a robust December. Today’s strong retail sales numbers lend weight to that view.

At total level, year-over-year growth of 4% in December does not seem all that impressive. Indeed, it is a little way below the average monthly rate for 2017 and quite a bit below the 6.6% uplift recorded in November.

However, the figure is affected by weak sales of autos which were up by only 0.4% over the prior year. When this, and other non-core categories are removed, pure retail sales increased by 4.6%. This represents a significant increase over the average monthly 3.8% uplift for 2017 and puts December as the third best month for retail growth of the year.

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