Japan\u2019s retail sales rose for a third month in May, powered by strong wage gains and government subsidies to ease the cost of living.<\/p>\n
Sales increased 1.9% after an upwardly revised gain in April, the economy ministry reported on Monday. The figure exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. From a year earlier, sales rose 5.3%, compared with the consensus forecast of a 3% gain. The figures are not adjusted for inflation.<\/p>\n
The broad advance was led by sales of vehicles, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Sales at department stores also climbed strongly from a year earlier, likely helped by robust tourist spending. Sales of seasonal appliances such as air conditioning nearly doubled from a year earlier, suggesting consumers rushed to beat an upcoming government policy that will tighten efficiency standards and ban models that don\u2019t meet the new requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s retail sales rose for a third month in May, powered by strong wage gains and government subsidies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,5472,5301,1294,13208,20612,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-663720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-consumer-spending","tag-economic-indicators","tag-economy","tag-japanese-economy","tag-retailers","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}