Portugal retail sales buck EU trend

Retail sales in Portugal have bucked an overall trend in the Euro Zone by growing 3.9%.

Retail sales turnover in the Euro Zone fell 1.3% on average in June and 0.8% in the European Union for the same month, countering two months of growth (April and May) according to Eurostat.
In May and June retail sales rose 20.6% (EZ) and 18.4% (EU) respectively in May and 5.3% and 5.1% in June, as a result of relaxing Covid-19 quarantine measures.
Portugal and Romania saw the greatest monthly increase in retail sales (3.9%), followed by Malta (3.2%), but the largest contractions were experienced in Belgium (-5.1%), Finland (-2.0%) and Estonia (-1.5%).
In terms of like-for-like, Ireland (9.1%), Lithuania (6.8%) and Holland (6.0%) saw the largest increases and Bulgaria (-17.5%), Malta (-8.1%) and Luxembourg (-6.1%) suffered the largest falls.
Retail sales in Portugal fell 3.6% against the same month in 2019.