Singapore's Retail Sales Excluding Vehicles Rise for Eighth Straight Month
Singapore’s retail sales, excluding motor vehicles, rose for an eighth month in June as record economic growth and tourist arrivals spurred spending at department stores.
The index measuring sales excluding automobiles climbed 5 percent from a year earlier, after gaining a revised 7.7 percent in May, the Statistics Department said today. Including vehicles, total retail sales fell 4.9 percent, more than the median forecast for a 3.4 percent decline in a Bloomberg News survey of six economists.
Singapore is in the running to be the world’s fastest- growing economy in 2010 after expanding 17.9 percent in the first six months of the year, the most on record. Monthly tourist arrivals in Singapore exceeded the 1 million mark for the first time in July, aided by the opening of two casino- resorts run by Genting Singapore Plc and Las Vegas Sands Corp.
A “higher flow of tourists especially from the emerging Asia region and the improvement in the earnings of the domestic workforce” should benefit retail sales for the next few months, Alvin Liew, an economist at Standard Chartered Plc. in Singapore, said before the report.
The island’s efforts to boost tourism include hosting the inaugural Youth Olympic Games this month. The Singapore leg of Formula One, the world’s most-watched motor sport, will take place in September.
Adjusted for seasonal factors, overall retail sales declined 0.7 percent from May, today’s report showed.
Singapore controls pollution and congestion on its roads by selling limited permits for each category of automobiles, and the quotas may distort sales figures because motor vehicles are the biggest component of the retail index, accounting for a third of the gauge.
To contact the reporter on this story: Shamim Adam in Singapore at sadam2@bloomberg.net
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