Strong UK retail growth in July 2016, despite Brexit

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There’s been a fair amount of doom and gloom about the economy in the wake of the British EU referendum. As you know, the UK voted to leave the EU on June 23rd 2016. So called “Brexit”.

But the first full month figures for retail sales since the referendum in June make for fairly heartening reading, if you check out the Office for National Statistics (ONS) report for the 4 week period from 3 July to 30 July 2016. You can find it here.

The ONS estimates that the volume of retail sales increased by 5.9% compared with July 2015.
When compared with June 2016, the quantity bought increased by 1.4%. All sectors showed growth but non-food sales blazed the trail.

The amount of money spent online increased by 16.7% compared with July 2015 and increased by 1.2% compared with June 2016. It seems that online retailing is still going strong.

These are positive numbers and as they say of the methodology: “The estimates are based on a monthly survey of 5,000 retailers, including all large retailers employing 100 people or more and those with annual turnover of greater than £60 million who employ 10 to 99 people. It is estimated that this survey covers approximately 95% of all known retail turnover in Great Britain.”

4 Responses

  1. We run an eBay store and our own website selling antique silver. Since the Brexit vote we have seen a decline in UK sales but a real increase in world wide sales as a result of the pound falling. I suspect once all the scaremongering ends about Brxit UK sales will return to normal too.

  2. We saw a huge drop in sales the week leading up to the vote, the week after it picked up and made back for the previous week but since then it has been pretty poor, one of the worst July’s that I can remember.

    But eBay capping sales has contributed a lot to that!

  3. This is largely due to consumers bringing forward planned purchases in the expectation of significant price rises later in the year.

    Though another factor is that interest obtainable on savings is so little that consumers feel that they might as well spend what they have.

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