In April 2024, Italy's retail sales experienced a minor decline on a month-to-month basis, with a 0.1 percent decrease in value and 0.3 percent decrease in volume. Non-food commodities experienced minor gains, rising by 0.3 percent in value and 0.2 percent in volume, while food sales experienced significant declines, falling by 0.7 percent in value and 0.9 percent in volume.

Year-on-year, retail sales decreased by 1.9 percent in value and 3.3 percent in volume. Food sales experienced a significant decline, with a 4.9 percent decrease in value and a 7.3 percent decrease in volume. Nevertheless, the volume of non-food products had a modest increase of 0.6 percent.

The trends within non-food commodities varied across product categories. Pharmaceutical products experienced the greatest increase at 3.7 percent, while photos, optics, films, magnetic media, and musical instruments experienced the greatest decline at 2.0 percent.

In comparison to April 2023, retail sales also varied by channel. E-commerce experienced a 7.4 percent. However, large-scale distribution, sales outside stores, and small surface businesses experienced a 3.8 percent, 0.8 percent, and 0.5 percent decrease, respectively.

The significant decrease in food products and the general decrease in retail sales indicate that consumer confidence may be declining. Consumers may be reducing their expenditure, particularly on essentials such as food, which is frequently an early indicator of economic distress. In general, the retail sales results indicate a cautious but mixed economic outlook for Italy, with potential areas of concern that policymakers and businesses will need to address to secure economic stability and growth.

Today's data were weaker than the consensus forecast for a month-over-month increase of 0.3 percent. The RPI fell from minus 15 to minus 16, while the RPI-P fell from minus 9 to minus 12, indicating under-performance in recent Italian data.

Sales are expected to increase 0.3 percent on the month after a disappointingly flat performance in March.

Retail sales measure the total receipts at stores that sell durable and nondurable goods. The headline data are expressed in nominal terms but volume statistics are also available. Autos are excluded. Only a very limited breakdown of subsector performance is available in the first report but much greater detail is provided in the following month's release. The Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) is the main producer of official statistics in Italy.

With consumer spending a large part of the economy, market players continually monitor spending patterns. Retail sales are a measure of consumer well-being. The pattern in consumer spending is often the foremost influence on stock and bond markets. For stocks, strong economic growth translates to healthy corporate profits and higher stock prices. For bonds, the focus is whether economic growth goes overboard and leads to inflation. Ideally, the economy walks that fine line between strong growth and excessive (inflationary) growth.