Ibec group, Retail Ireland has welcomed new CSO retail sales figures for November, which showed the total value of retail sales rise by 2.2% compared to November last year. Excluding the sales for cars and in bars, the value of sales rose by 1.2%.
Retail Ireland Director Thomas Burke commented, "While the retail recovery still has a long way to go, consumer confidence is on the up."
However, he also noted that, "Not all retailers are benefiting from the positive trends, with specialist outlets such as butchers, bakeries and off licences seeing a combined fall of 1.9% in the value of their sales, while the pharmacy category recorded a drop of 0.8% in its sales values."
These figures mark nearly a full year of monthly year-on-year increases in value and volume of Irish retails sales. The figures for December will play a key role in determining the overall performance of the sector in 2014.
© 2014 - Checkout Magazine by Jenny Whelan.
