Retail sales far higher than expected, while unemployment continues to fall

WBJ:

According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), growth of retail sales in August was 7.9% higher than in July and far more than expected by analysts.

"Last month we observed deterioration of dynamics of real wages, which was accompanied by growing inflation. Moreover there was no substantial increase in the level of indebtedness of households resulting from mortgage loans. This means that the only reason for growing sales were one-off social benefits," said Wojciech Kuryłek, chief economist with KB. He went on to say that this data should be disregarded by the Monetary Policy Council (RPP). Halina Dmochowska, deputy president of GUS, believes economic growth in Q3 will be slightly faster than in Q2 when it amounted to 2.8%. "We have not recorded any spectacular changes in economic occurrences," said Dmochowska. In August unemployment dropped by 1.3% in relation to respective period of 2004 and stood at 17.8%.