Singapore retail sales in May inched up 0.1% to $3.8b

Sales in the furniture & household equipment industry led growth at 9.1%.

Singapore retail sales grew 0.1% in May 2018 compared to last year due partly to lower motor vehicle sales, the Department of Statistics revealed. Excluding motor vehicles, retail sales rose 2.2%.

The total retail sales value in May 2018 was estimated at $3.8b. Online retail sales contributed to about 4.3%.

Retail industries reported mixed performances. The highest sales growth was registered by the furniture & household equipment industry at 9.1%, with increased shopping before the Hari Raya festive period. Sales at petrol service stations rose 8.8%, due partly to higher petrol prices. After removing the price effect, there was a smaller increase of 0.8% in sales volume.

The sale of the wearing apparel & footwear, medical goods & toiletries, and department stores industries also recorded increases of between 2.7% to 6.8%.

In contrast, sales of computer & telecommunications equipment fell 11.3% during this period, as a result of lower sales of telecommunications equipment. Arising from the lower number of motor vehicles sold, retail sales of motor vehicles dropped 8.4%. The optical goods & books, recreational goods, mini-marts & convenience stores, supermarkets & hypermarkets, and food retailers industries registered smaller declines in sales of 0.8% to 3.2%.

Meanwhile, the sales of food & beverage services grew 1.2% in May 2018. The total sales value of food & beverage services in May 2018 was estimated at $689m, slightly higher than the $681m last year.

Fast food outlets and food caterers registered higher sales at 10.8% and 5.7% respectively, whilst turnover of restaurants and other eating places dipped by 0.3% and 1.9% respectively during this period.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia