Sales were up 1.5% month-on-month after increasing by 0.4% in the month of October and falling by 0.6% in September.
Retail sales were expected to have increased by 1.9% y/y.
The main contributors to the 2.6% increase were general dealers who contributed 1.5 percentage points‚ and retailers in hardware‚ paint and glass who contributed one percentage point.
Barclays Africa economists said that retail sales should be further supported in the months to come by the steep fall in crude oil prices‚ which was providing a major boost to household disposable income.
They estimated that if oil prices stayed around $52 a barrel‚ the boost to household income in 2015 could be worth nearly R20bn. "Of course‚ households may choose to allocate some of these gains to debt repayment‚ as opposed to consumption‚" they said in a research note.
Rand Merchant Bank economist Mamello Matikinca said that while the decline in oil and food prices should have aided growth in retail sales‚ electricity outages towards the end of the year might have hampered sales growth.
Stats SA said seasonally adjusted retail trade sales increased by 0.9% in the three months ended November 2014 compared with the previous three months.
Source: BDpro via I-Net Bridge
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