Spanish retail shrinks as VAT rise fades and deflation takes a grip
- Mar 30, 2014 | Richard Asquith
The latest Spanish annual retails sales figures showed a reversal of a temporary recent uplift. This drop off was partially down to residual impact of the September 2012 Spanish VAT raise from 18% to 21%.
Following three successive years of decline since 2010, Spanish consumer spend in the shops had been picking up. However, these latest figures show a return to the steady decline linked to stubborn, high unemployment and austerity measures of the government.
The brief respite since September 2013 was actually a bounce from the September 2012 VAT rise dropping out of the annual calculations.
There was also a drop in the retail price index measure of inflation for February of 0.3%, giving rise to worries that the problem will worsen with shoppers postponing non-essential expenditure as they expect further price discounts. The same problem dogged Japan for almost twenty years.
The 2012 Spanish VAT rise was the second austerity indirect tax hike - Spain increased its VAT rate from 16% to 18% in 2010. Spain started the 2007 financial crisis with one of the lowest VAT rates in Europe at 16%. However, it is now close to the average EU VAT rate of 21.6%.
