Retail sales appear to be bottoming out, according to figures released yesterday by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
27 per cent of retailers surveyed said that sales were higher in early February than during the same period last year, while 52 per cent said sales were lower. The CBI index now measures -25, corresponding to the difference between the percentage of respondents seeing a positive change and those reporting a negative change.
This is the best performance for the index since June 2008. More importantly, it is also significantly better than December"s reading of -55.
Analysts have also recently suggested that the housing market may be bottoming out, giving hope that a recovery may be on its way. Six of the eight major house price indexes showed an increase in average prices in the first month of the year.
