Italy's retail sales fell sharply in April - Istat

According to the report from Istat, in April 2020 estimates for seasonally adjusted retail trade index sharply declined by 10.5% in value terms in the month on month series, after decreasing by 21.3% in March 2020, as numerous stores stayed shut due to lockdown measures contrasting the Covid-19 outbreak. Likewise volume of sales decreased by 11.4% when compared to the previous month.

In the three months to April 2020, both value and volume of sales dropped by 15.8% and 16.6%, respectively.

Year-on-year value of sales was down 26.3%, while volume reached -28.1% when compared with April 2019. Food sales increased by 6.1% in value terms, while non-food sales plunged by 52.2%.

Large-scale distribution fell by 16.4% compared with the same period a year earlier, while small-scale distribution reported a record decline, decreasing by 37.1%.

In April 2020, non-store sales suffered a drop of 45.2% compared with April 2019.

Despite other channels of distribution experienced a significant decline, online sales increased by 27.1% when compared with the same month a year earlier.

Looking at the value of sales for non-food products, all categories fell dramatically in the year-on-year series.

This drop resulted in extremely low levels for shoes, leather goods and travel items (-90.6%), furniture and textile items and household furnishings (-83.6%), clothing (-83.4%) and sporting equipment, games and toys (-82.5%), while pharmaceutical products was the category suffering the least with a negative 3.5%.