August retail sales up 29%

But volume of sales of furniture and fixtures fell 1.8%.

The Census & Statistics Department said on Monday the value of total retail sales in August, provisionally estimated at $34.3 billion, rose 29% over a year earlier.

After netting out the effect of price changes over the same period, the volume of total retail sales increased by 20.7%.

The revised estimate of the value of total retail sales in July, at $35.2 billion, increased by 29.1% over July 2010, while the volume of total retail sales went up 22.4%.

For the first eight months of 2011, total retail sales increased by 25.6% in value and 19.7% in volume over the same period a year earlier.

The volume of sales of miscellaneous consumer durable goods increased the most, by 69.3%. This was followed by sales of electrical goods and photographic equipment (53.7%); jewellery, watches and clocks, and valuable gifts (33.6%); wearing apparel (23.6%); commodities in department stores (17.3%); footwear, allied products and other clothing accessories (16.4%); miscellaneous consumer goods (15.2%); motor vehicles and parts (14%); commodities in supermarkets (5%); and fuels (2.6%). The volume of sales of furniture and fixtures dropped 1.8%.

The volume of total retail sales increased by 3.5% in the three months ending August when compared with the preceding three-month period.