British retail sales shot up in January at four times the rate predicted by analysts as consumers snapped up cheap electrical goods and stocked up for an early Easter.
The Office for National Statistics said today sales rose 0.8 per cent last month, recovering from a 0.2 per cent fall in December and putting them up 5.6 per cent on the year.
The rise was driven by a 0.7 per cent monthly jump in food stores sales, helped by Easter falling in March this year.
Household good stores sales leapt 4.3 per cent on the month and by 14.8 per cent on the year - the biggest annual rise since October 2001.
This was due to heavy discounting in the New Year sales. Prices of electrical goods, for example, were 14.9 per cent lower than a year ago - the sharpest cost-cutting since records began more than a decade ago.
The figures are likely to boost expectations that the Bank of England will wait before cutting interest rates again, having cut them twice since December to 5.25 per cent to help bolster the economy.