CHEP index portends more retail weakness

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From Deloitte:

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The latest edition of the AFGC CHEP Retail Index forecasts slowing, but positive, year-on-year growth in retail sales through to the end of 2016. The Index was 1.9% per cent higher in the month of September 2016 compared with the month of September 2015. On a quarterly basis, the Index was also 2.5 per cent higher in the September quarter of 2016 compared with the September quarter of 2015. Growth in the Index is expected to slow during the last quarter of 2016, to 1.6 per cent over the 12 months to November 2016 and 1.5 per cent over the 12 months to December 2016. ABS Retail Trade trend data for the month of August 2016 shows that year-onyear growth in nominal retail trade was 2.6 per cent over the year to August 2016.1 The sales result for retailers over the year to August 2016 as reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics was weaker than the forecast in the previous AFGC CHEP Retail Index. The growth of 2.6 per cent over the year to August 2016 compares with the prediction of 3.1 per cent growth.

Not setting up for ball-tearing Xmas.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.