SPENDING in food stores dropped for the first time in at least 25 years as the supermarket price war took effect, official figures have shown.
July's year-on-year fall of 1.3 per cent was the first since records began in January 1989, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It said: "The drop suggests that prolonged discounting and price wars were having an effect on overall sales."
The grocery sector has become a price-cutting battleground as Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons feel the squeeze from discounters Aldi and Lidl, who are gnawing away at their market share.
The headline figure for retail sales showed a weaker than expected 0.1 per cent growth month-on-month. However, a three-month on three-month increase of 0.3 per cent was the seventh consecutive improvement, the longest period of sustained growth by this measure since 2007.
Scottish retail sales fell by 1.8 per cent in July, according to data from the Scottish Retail Consortium which was published this week.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article