SINGAPORE, March 4 (Xinhua/APP): The Department of Statistics (DOS) of Singapore announced on Friday that Singapore’s retail sales increased by 11.8 percent year on year in January 2022, compared to the revised 6.7 percent year-on-year increase recorded in the previous month.
Excluding motor vehicles, retail sales grew by 15.8 percent in January this year, compared to the 8.6 percent growth last December.
The DOS said that the improvement in retail sales performance this January was mainly attributed to the increased spending prior to Chinese New Year which was in early February this year, while pre-Chinese New Year spending in 2021 was mainly in February as the festival was in mid-February last year.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, retail sales fell by 2.5 percent in the first month of 2022 over the previous month.
The estimated total value of retail sales in January 2022 was about 4.2 billion Singapore dollars (about 3.09 billion U.S. dollars). Of these, online retail sales made up an estimated 12.9 percent, lower than the revised 14.4 percent recorded in December 2021 when there were major online shopping events.
The DOS also reported that the sales of food and beverage services increased by 9.5 percent year on year in January, compared to the revised 7.3 percent increase in the previous month. On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, Singapore’s sales of food and beverage services decreased by 3.5 percent this January.
The sales value was estimated at 829 million Singapore dollars (about 610 million U.S. dollars) in January, of which the proportion of online sales was estimated at 29.1 percent, higher than the 28.6 percent recorded last December.
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