Worst January sales growth in 15 years

graeme at 7:59 a.m. Wed 17 Feb 2010

The KPMG retail monitor downloadable here reports the “worst January sales growth in 15 years”, continuing the bad flow of economic news.

Total sales rose just 1.2% over January 2009 (less than inflation, so a decline in real terms), and like-for-like sales fell 0.7% (a decline of several percent in real terms).

The combination of recession and snow is clearly bad, and the return of VAT to 17.5% would have shifted sales to December as people bought ahead of the rise, but it also made January look better as these numbers include VAT (why KPMG, why?)

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