The Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) has released provisional findings showing that retail turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays in the country rose by 34.8% in nominal terms in April.
The FSO said that these results were largely due to weak performance last April, owing to the Covid-19 lockdown and other safety measures introduced that month.
Go deeper with GlobalData
According to the FSO’s findings, real turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays grew by 35.7% in the month. Nominal turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays in the sector rose by 35.1% year-on-year (YoY), with the exception of service stations.
The retail trade turnover, excluding service stations, shows a 10.7% nominal increase in April when compared to the results recorded in April 2019.
The nominal turnover shows an 8.8% drop when service stations are included in the two-year comparison.
During the month, the retail sector, excluding service stations, showed a seasonally adjusted decline in nominal turnover of 4.6%.
Retail trade of food, drinks and tobacco increased by 11.8% in nominal turnover during this period. The two-year comparison of turnover in this sector shows a growth of 15.7%, according to the FSO.
The non-food sector posted a 73.1% nominal increase in the month compared with the previous year.
The two-year comparison in the non-food sector shows an increase of only 7.5%. The FSO said that the increase in sales in the non-food sector is ‘not only’ due to a low month in the previous year.
The FSO said that the retail trade turnover statistics were based on a random sample of almost 4,000 businesses.
