Retail sales in March and April ’better than expected’, according to a report from the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

The BRC Analysts’ Q2 Forecasts for 2021 and 2022 Retail Sales and Prices is available to download from the Retail Insight and Analytics website.

 Key points include:

  • We have revised our sales forecasts significantly compared to our Q1 projections. Both Food and Non-Food Sales were stronger in March and April than what we had expected in January, and we now expect higher spending for the following months than we did in Q1.
  • We now project Total Sales to increase by 5.9% (an upward revision from 1.2% projected in Q1), with Food sales rising by 2.0% (an upward revision of our Q1 forecast of 0.3%), and Non-Food sales increasing by 9.1% (an upward revision from our Q1 projection of 2.0%). 
  • For 2022 we forecast Total Sales to decrease by 3.4%, with Food sales projected to fall by 1.0%, while Non-Food sales projected to decline by 5.4%.
  • We revised our Shop Prices forecasts for 2021: we now expect Food prices to rise by 1.1% (a downward revision from our Q1 forecast of 1.3%), but our expectation of the evolution of Non-Food prices has remained unchanged at -2.2%. This implies that overall Shop Prices would decrease by 1.1%, compared to our Q1 projection of -1.0%.
  • For 2022, our price forecasts are unchanged from our Q1 projections. We expect Food prices to rise by 2.0% and Non-Food prices to fall by 1.8%, which means that Shop Prices would fall by 0.5%.

In producing these forecasts, we have assumed that restrictions will lift according to the roadmap, that no another lockdown will be imposed and that the vaccination rollout will continue at pace.

Read the full report here

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