UK shop prices continue to fall

UK shop prices dropped by 1.7 percent in April, marking the third-year anniversary of falling shop prices.

Clothing and footwear continue to be hit hard with the sector seeing a 7.1 percent year-on-year decline, highlighting the heavy discounting in the run up to the summer season, the British Retail Consortium and Nielsen stated in the monthly shop price index.

Overall non-food sales were down by 2.9 percent in April, down from the 2.6 percent fall in March, marking the deepest deflation rate reported since April 2015.

British Retail Consortium, chief executive officer, Helen Dickinson, said: “We’ve seen three years of falling shop prices, with prices falling by 1.7 percent in April compared to a year earlier. The thirty-six consecutive months of price falls is being driven by intense competition across the industry. It has knock on implications for margins and profitability given the combination of continued investment in digital and rising cost pressures, compounded by recent policy announcements.

“Ensuring they do not pass on these cost increases, alongside the intensity of competition in the market, are the principal reasons why retailers continue to respond to their customers’ demands for value. As this month’s figures show, this has helped shoppers and kept inflation (and therefore interest rates) low to betterment of the UK economy.”