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Leveraged by supermarket sales, trade stays at 0.1%, records third positive month
October 10, 2019 09h00 AM | Last Updated: October 10, 2019 12h38 PM
Supermarkets and hypermarkets prevented negative retail sales in August. Volume of trade was 0.1% in August in relation to July, which indicated stability, though it was the third consecutive month of positive rates, accruing a rise of 1.2% in the year.
Sales increased 1.3% compared with August 2018. These results are from the Monthly Survey of Trade, released today by the IBGE.
Sales in the sector of supermarkets and hypermarkets, which includes food and tobacco products, increased 0.6% between July and August, the fourth positive figure in a row. Other articles of personal and domestic use also rose (0.2%). Together, the two sectors accounted for more than 60% of the total retail.
"The increase in these two groups points out to a more basic consumption, associated with the lower-income classes of the population", explained Isabella Nunes, manager of the survey.
Office, computer and communication material and equipment (3.8%) and books, magazines and stationery (0.2%) also rose.
On the other hand, sales of fuels and lubricants (-3.3%), fabric, apparel and footwear (-2.5%), furniture and household appliances (-1.5%) and pharmaceutical, medical and orthopedic articles, and toiletries (-0.3%) were on the dropping side.
"The negative change for those types of products confirms that the population is allocating their budget in indispensable articles. The balance between these four dropping categories and two big rising sectors took the market to a level closer to stability", assessed the researcher.
The extended retail trade, which includes motor vehicles (-1.7%) and construction material (-0.8%), remained stable at 0.0%. "Again, supermarkets and food balanced those negative results, maintaining the overall index stable", concluded Nunes.
