Retail sales in the Netherlands saw growth of more than 6% year-on-year in the second quarter, due to higher selling prices.
Sales volumes for the period declined by almost 4%, according to the latest quarterly retail sales figures from the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS, Statistics Netherlands).
Food Retail
In the food category, sales increased by almost 10% in the second quarter, compared to the same period last year, while sales volume fell by nearly 3%.
Food specialty shops saw sales volume decline by nearly 6.5% during the quarter, compared to the corresponding period last year.
Sales increased by over 3% year on year during the quarter in the non-food segment, while sales volume fell by 4.6%.
Do-it-yourself, consumer electronics, white goods and clothing shops, in particular, all saw lower sales, the data showed. In each of these categories, volumes in the second quarter were about 8% lower than in the same period a year earlier.
Other Highlights
Online retailers reported sales increase of more than 4% compared to the same period a year earlier, with multichannel businesses seeing a turnover increase of more than 5%.
Turnover growth was nearly 4% for shops selling exclusively online, data showed.
Elsewhere, the number of declared bankruptcies in the retail sector declined to 59 companies in the second quarter from 86 in the first quarter, CBS said.
However, the total number of declared bankruptcies increased from 728 in the first quarter to 797 in the second quarter.
Of all declared bankruptcies in the second quarter, 7% were businesses in the retail sector. In the first three months of 2023, it was 12%.
