German retail sales fell sharply in November, statistics office data showed today.
The statistics office said seasonally adjusted retail sales fell a nominal 3.3 per cent month-on-month or by an inflation adjusted "real" 3.2 per cent. Compared with November 2001, sales were down a nominal 6.3 per cent and down a real 6 per cent.
Analysts polled by Reuters had on average expected retail sales to have risen a real 0.4 per cent month-on-month and to have fallen 1.2 per cent year on year.
The news weighed on shares in leading retailers, which have already come under pressure in anticipation of weak Christmas sales data.
Shares in Metro shed 3 per cent to €23.54 in early trade. Shares in KarstadtQuelle, Europe's largest department store and mail order retailer, fell 1.5 per cent to €16.55.
"It's a big disappointment," said Mr Ralph Solveen, an economist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. "It shows all the talk about the government's tax plans had a much bigger impact on private consumption than we had thought".
After narrowly winning re-election in September, the Social Democrats-Greens government unveiled tax increases and spending cuts last October to fill a huge budgetary hole it said it was unaware of before the country's general election.