The C.A.M.E. (Argentine Chamber of Medium-Sized Businesses) people over in the non-serious country came out with their measurement of monthly retail sales this morning and the number off the wires caught this humble scribe's eye. "Hmm. +4.6% for May 2010, not bad" was the thought, so off we scuttled to the CAME website for more and as this Spanish language table shows, the pick-up in sales was pretty much across the board.
This is good. What's not so good is the wider context of the retail scene in the non-serious country, as this table I stuck together shows (after checking out the back data):
The most recent seven months of YoY retail increases is, of course, going in the right direction. But the slump has been very heavy in the preceding two years and sales now are still under 2007 numbers in absolute terms (not to mention dollar terms, as the inflation levels must be causing havoc if you use an outside measurement).So Argentina is making some progress to recovery, but it's still pretty fragile stuff.
