March 3 (SeeNews) - Romania's retail sales grew by an annual 15.6% in January, the statistics office, INS, said on Thursday.
On an unadjusted basis, food sales rose 26.8%, non-food sales climbed 10.8% and sales of fuels were up 5.8% compared to January 2015, INS said in a statement.
Based on seasonally and working-day adjusted data, retail sales climbed 1.9% on the month in January.
The figures do not include trade with motor vehicles and motorcycles.
Romania's retail sales rose by 8.9% on the year in 2015.
Details on January retail sales follow:
|
m/m change* |
y/y change |
Retail sales |
+1.9 |
+15.6 |
- Food sales |
+1.4 |
+26.8 |
- Non-food sales |
0.0 |
+10.8 |
- Fuels |
+7.0 |
+5.8 |
* based on seasonally-adjusted data.
Commenting on the figures, ING Bank analysts said this is the fastest yearly expansion of retail sales in Romania since September 2008, signalling very strong private demand at the start of the year.
The pointed to the expansion of nonfood sales by 10.6%, versus an average of slightly over 2% last year. "Such
brisk growth points to upside risks to short-term GDP growth, while also underscoring the scope for much higher demand-led inflationary pressures," ING analysts said in a daily snapshot of financial markets.
Looking forward, the analysts said they expect an increase by 1.1% quarter-on-quarter and by 3.6% year-on-year in the January-March period, adding that "solid domestic demand and potential for investments uptrend, after the government massively accelerated budget spending in the final part of 2015 do suggest a print in excess of 4% could be achievable".
For their part, Banca Transilvania analysts said that they consider that medium-term dynamics of private consumption will be influenced mainly by the development of productive investment in the economy, by the climate in the credit market, the taxation of the economy, migration population dynamics, domestic agricultural production and fluctuations in international prices for crude oil.
"In our macro-econometric scenario, we expect average annual growth rates for private consumption by 5.8% in 2016, 5.5% in 2017 and 5% in 2018,", Banca Transilvania analysts concluded.
According to Raiffeisen Bank analysts, the advance of retail sales in early 2016 points to a further very good performance of private consumption which has been and is expected to remain the main driver of economic growth.