ZAGREB, March 16, 2018 – Croatia’s retail sales increased by 6.1% in January 2018 compared with January 2017, growing for 41 months in a row, mostly thanks to a jump in new car sales, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (DZS) released on Friday.
Retail sales rose by 1.0% over December 2017 and jumped by 6.1% over January 2017. The increase is considerably higher than in December last year, when retail sales grew 1.5% year on year, and is the fastest growth since last August.
Three economic analysts polled by Hina had expected annual retail sales growth of 2.9% on average, their projections ranging from 2.7% to 3.0%.
The January growth rate marked the continuation of the positive trend, given that an annual drop in retail sales was last recorded in August 2014.
In January 2018, compared with January 2017, new car sales jumped by 30.8%, sales in food, drinks and tobacco rose by 0.5%, while sales in non-food products went up by 11.7%.
The rise in retail sales in January can be ascribed to delayed purchases of cars last year because of reduced taxes that took effect at the start of this year, analysts at Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) said in their comment on the DZS report.
