Portugal’s Retail Trade Turnover fell to 14.5% in February
Last February, the Retail Trade Turnover index registered a year-on-year change rate of -14.5%.
The lockdown, decreed in mid-January, led to a deepening fall in retail sales. The Retail Trade Turnover Index registered a year-on-year fall of 14.5% in February, compared to a drop of 10.7% in January, according to data released by Statistics Portugal (INE).
In February 2020 the effects of the pandemic were not yet felt, and there is also the “additional particularity of the absence of the usual carnival festivities in February 2021,” said the INE. It was the reduction in non-food products that weighed most heavily on the decline of this indicator during the year’s second month.
The indices of employment, wages and salaries and hours worked in the sector showed year-on-year falls of 5.4%, 5.8% and 21.1%, respectively, also representing a worsening compared to the previous month. In January, the year-on-year rates of change were -4.8%, -4.2% and -13.8%, in the same order.
