Mysupermarket.co.uk has compared the cost of a basket of essential food items such as bread and milk and found that the price is 15% higher than this time last year. Significant increases were on bread which is up 20% and eggs which has seen a rise of over 50%. (more…)

Tesco, The UK’s largest retailer, has seen profits increase by 11.8% to £2.846bn. Despite the credit crunch and downturn in retail, Tesco surprised analysts with these results, causing their shares to rise over 5.5% this morning. (more…)

After 3 months of doom and gloom figures and sales increases of just 0.3% in December, January results offered a glimmer of hope. Like for like sales (excluding new stores) rose 2.6% from January 2007. The results include food sales and are also bolstered by heavy discounting. Therefore whilst sales increased the margins earned are likely to be lower than last year.

Whilst activity on the high street in the January sales was better than expected, only 39% of respondants in a CBI survey reported increased sales compared to this time last year. On the back of this news, a slight increase in February sales is predicted.

However, there is a consensus amongst analysts that retailers are in for a bumpy ride in 2008. Vicky Redwood at Capital Economics said “The survey is hardly an encouraging first indicator of spending in January and certainly fits in with our view that spending growth is set to slow sharply this year.”