In April, constant price sales in the area of services grew by 8.4% y-o-y. Retail sales went up by 5.7%, compared with April 2000. Sales in transport grew by 12.0% y-o-y. Sales in communications rose by 23.7%.
We can a relatively strong increase of sales in branches aimed at firms as transport or services for firms that rose by 9.5%, while retail sales and services for households rose much slower. A recovery of the Czech economy is led by investment and export activity. Households will have to wait for their moment because we are still at the begging of the economic recovery. However, increasing labour productivity and better financial results could enable firms to increase wages and thus support consumer demand in near future.
Current development of retail sales does not indicate any immediate threat to inflationary development and trade balance.
For the whole year 2001, we expect of retail sales to increase by 4.0%.
(David Marek)