Retail sales and services turnover publications will be postponed until further notice, Destatis has announced.

• The delay in publication is due to an update in the data collection / processing setup. This brings two changes to the releases:
  • Individual firms' revenue recognition can be split across categories ('Wirtschaftszweige'). Until now, for each firm, only revenue falling into the respectively largest category for that firm was recorded in the Destatis releases; revenue falling into other than the (for that firm) main category was not recorded for the calculation of the index value. This should lead to a more accurate reflection of underlying developments. Destatis plans to implement that change with the September release.
  • The most detailed (5-digit) category classification will not be available any more after the update (this will come into effect as per the next release).
• These changes are in line with new EU data requirements. It is unclear at this stage if the changes will have any impact on future releases of Eurozone retail sales figures (although the next of those is not due until August). Last week's Eurozone retail sales for May print merely noted that German figures were unavailable.