Analytics, Estonia, Markets and Companies, Retail

According to Swedbank’s projections, the retail sales growth will stay near 7%.

According to the Statistics Board, sales volumes in retail sales enterprises grew 6.5% at constant prices in June in the year-on-year comparison.

Swedbank expects the sales volumes in retail sales enterprises to continue growing, partly due to the continued increase in the number of foreign tourists visiting Estonia and partly due to Estonian residents’ preferences in terms of spending their holidays in Estonia.

Spending confidence is also affected by an increase in households’ incomes which in turn is affected by the improvement of the situation on the labour market as well as pay increase.

In comparison to the early months of 2012, fears of unemployment have been significantly reduced and that has encouraged people to make purchases that were rather more frequently delayed in the beginning of the year. At the same time, the number of households that have a rather limited budget has also grown and that demonstrates that it is not to be expected that retail sales volumes would start growing quickly.