German Retail Sales Stagnate

Retail sales in Germany stagnated for the second month in a row in March, confirming the persistent sluggishness of consumer demand in the euro zone's biggest economy, data showed on Friday. "Compared with February, there was no significant increase in retail sales in calendar and seasonally adjusted terms in March," the federal statistics office, Destatis, said in a statement. And retail sales also stagnated on a 12-month basis, the statisticians calculated. The data were better than expected -- analysts had been penciling in a month-on-month decline in retail sales last month. Taking the first three months of 2005 as a whole, retail sales rose by a nominal one percent on a 12-month basis and were unchanged in real or price-adjusted terms.