By Henry Saker-Clark, Press Association Deputy Business Editor<\/p>\n
Retail sales slipped back in July as clothing sales fell at the fastest rate for more than a year, according to official figures.<\/p>\n
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said retail sales volumes declined by 0.5% in July, compared with the previous month.<\/p>\n
It fell back from 0.7% growth in June, which had been revised down by statisticians from a previous estimate of 1% for the month.<\/p>\n
July\u2019s decline was a marginally larger fall than expected, as economists had predicted a 0.4% decline for the month.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/x.com\/ONS\/status\/2090681437825454577?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw<\/p>\n
Sales from clothing and footwear retailers slid by 2.7% for the month, representing the sharpest drop since May last year.<\/p>\n
Experts said this was linked to many retailers bringing promotions and discount activity forward into June, helping drive sales that month but resulting in a drop off in July.<\/p>\n
The ONS said retail sales volumes increased by 1.1% over the three months to July, compared with the previous three months.<\/p>\n
ONS chief economist Grant Fitzner said: \u201cRetail sales increased in the latest three months, with all main sectors, apart from motor fuel, seeing growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome retailers told us that hot weather and promotions helped sales of outdoor products and items such as fans, with clothing and online sports merchandise also doing well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Henry Saker-Clark, Press Association Deputy Business Editor Retail sales slipped back in July as clothing sales fell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-600116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}