Singapore’s retail sales unexpectedly rose in March as economic growth encouraged consumer spending at department stores and boosted purchases of luxury goods.
The index measuring purchases excluding automobiles rose 7% from a year earlier after dropping a revised 3.2% in February, the Statistics Department said in a statement today. Including vehicles, which are sold subject to government caps, total retail sales rose 0.8%, compared with the median forecast for a 2.4% decline in a Bloomberg News survey of seven economists.
Singapore’s unemployment rate is at a three-year low as employers expand payrolls to meet demand for goods and services in an accelerating economy. Tourists are visiting the city in record numbers, boosting earnings for companies such as Genting Singapore Plc and Las Vegas Sands Corp., whose casino complexes on the island include shopping malls, hotels and restaurants.
“Tourist arrivals have been quite strong and wages are rising because of the good labor market,” Kit Wei Zheng, a Singapore-based economist at Citigroup Inc., said before the report. “That should remain supportive of retail sales and consumption spending.”
Adjusted for seasonal factors, overall retail sales rose 4.7% in March from February, when they dropped a revised 3.5%, today’s report showed.
Singapore controls pollution and congestion on its roads by selling limited permits for each automobile category, and the quotas may distort sales figures because motor vehicles are the biggest component of the retail index, accounting for about a quarter of the gauge.
Source : TheEdge – 13 May 2011
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