Retail sales in Italy declined in July after rising the previous month, according to data released by the country’s statistics office Istat on Wednesday.
Retail sales fell 0.4% on month in seasonally-adjusted terms, following a 0.7% increase in June. The reading missed expectations–economists had forecast a 0.4% rise, according to FactSet.
Compared with the same month a year earlier, Italian retail sales rose 6.7% in July. The increase partly reflects a base effect as retail sales contracted sharply on-year in July 2020 amid a country-wide lockdown.
Italy’s economy, the third largest in the eurozone, expanded 2.7% in the second quarter compared with the previous three-month period on the back of a gradual easing of Covid-19 restrictions. Solid economic growth is expected to have extended to the third quarter, and Istat expects the country’s GDP to expand by 4.7% this year as a whole.