Retail Confidence Drops, Expectations Deteriorate TEPE which has been standing in the negatives since January had a value of -4.4 in April 2012.

TEPE recorded year-on-year and month-on-month drops in April 2012. The anticipation for business volume recovery compared to the previous year and last three months improved slightly whereas expectations for sales and order volume deteriorated. The EU converged to the TEPE at the highest degree since March 2011.

TEPE which has been standing in the negatives since January had a value of -4.4 in April 2012. This implies a month-on-month decrease by 3 points and a year-on-year decrease by 6.6 points.

The balance value of the expectations for the next three months stood at 10.7 in April. 47.7 percent of TEPE survey participants expect an improvement in their business activities in the next three months while 22.8 percent expect a deterioration. This implies a 3.5 point decrease compared to April 2011 and a 5.4 point decrease compared to March 2012.

In April 2012, 22.5 percent of the participants declared a year-on-year improvement in business activities whereas 49.9 percent declared deterioration. Volume of business activities, therefore decreased by 7.1 points compared to April 2011 and increased by 4.1 points compared to March 2012.

The EU-27 Retail Confidence Index stood at -8.7 in April 2012, demonstrating a month-on-month increase by 2.6 points and a year-on-year drop by 5.3 points. The gap between Turkey and EU therefore decreased considerably for the first time since March 2011.

Comparing the retail confidence indices for the EU-27 countries and Turkey, year-on-year drops were observed in all EU countries excluding United Kingdom, Germany, Romania, Finland, Bulgaria and Spain. The harshest drops were experienced by Italy, Swede and Belgium. Eurozone countries performed worse than the overall EU region compared to both April 2011 and March 2012.

Electrical appliances, radio and televisions sector outperformed all other sectors in April 2012. This was followed by the non-specialized stores and food, beverages and tobacco products sector. All sectors but the aforesaid three faced year-on-year drops in performance, where “others” sector declined at a pace less than the average and textiles, ready-made clothing and footwear sector and furniture and lighting equipment sectors declined more than the average. The sharpest year-on-year drop was observed in the motor vehicles sector, as was in March 2012.

Question-based assessment of TEPE survey results reveal that the level of business activities compared to the last three months and the last year, and expectations for the level of orders placed with suppliers and the volume of business activities in the next three months worsened in April 2012. On the other hand, expectations for the level of employment and the sales prices for the next three months and for the level of inventories improved. Compared to March 2012, expectations for the level of employment and the sales prices for the next three months demonstrated the sharpest drop while the year-on-year change in the level of business activities and expectations for the number of stores next year and the volume of inventories showed the highest improvement.