Wholesales, retail sales and food/beverage industies registered an increase of 2.51 percent in revenue last month from a year earlier to reach NT$1.04 trillion (US$32.5 billion). While the retail industry was the only sector to experience a decline, a Ministry of Economic Affairs report showed yesterday.
With NT$266.4 billion in sales last month, the retail industry declined 1.86 percent from a year ago. Among its sub-industries, the fuel industry saw the largest increase, at 10.56 percent, while the motor vehicles and parts industry dropped 34.76 percent from a year earlier.
Only 9,563 new cars were sold last month, the lowest monthly sales in 20 years, amid high oil prices.
“Also, sales of durable goods such as home appliances have been on the wane over the last few months,” an official at the Department of Statistics, who wished to remain anonymous, said by telephone yesterday.
Sales of the general merchandise industry, including department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores and hypermarkets reached NT$69.3 billion last month, up 3.26 percent from a year earlier.
Aided by promotions and Father’s Day last month, sales at department stores, including shopping malls, climbed 6.57 percent year-on-year to NT$17.1 billion. This compared with a 3.43 percent growth rate in the first eight months of this year.
Convenience store sales reached NT$18.1 billion last month, up 4.39 percent from a year earlier. Convenience store sales were up by 0.79 percent in the first eight months of this year, signaling that the industry may have reached maturity, the official said.
The convenience store market remained very competitive, with the four major convenience store chains operating more than 9,000 stores nationwide. As a result, business operators will have to either launch promotions or provide new services to widen their revenues, the official said.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
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