South African retail set record in January

January 2026 saw record retail sales. This is on a real seasonally adjusted basis. Sales grew by 4.2% year-on-year in January after a 3.7% gain in 2025 and a 2.5% increase in 2024.

Household consumption is the single largest category of economic activity. This means that 2026 economic growth had a good start to the year.

Analytical adjustments

As December retail sales are far more than January sales, Statistics South Africa adjusts the data. This is seasonal adjustment. Concurrently, this removes the effects of normal seasonal variation. The effects of other influences are then recognised more clearly. One such effect could be the introduction of the “two pot” retirement scheme.

From 1 September 2024, South African retirement funds are split into a “savings” (one-third) and “retirement” (two-thirds) pot. Significantly, many people accessed their savings pot. This boosted retail sales in 2025.

Moreover, the other adjustment done removes the effect of inflation. Retail inflation is not the same as consumer inflation. This is because they measure different baskets.

Furthermore, economists make another adjustment. They take the real seasonally adjusted data and then index the data to a starting point. This is normally started at an index value of 100. This means it is easy to get a percentage increase. Consequently, the January 2026 value is 10.4% higher than the January 2024 level. It is now easy to see that the January 2026 retail sales are a record.

January 2026 monthly change

Moreover, the real seasonally adjusted January monthly change was a 0.9% increase. This followed a 0.5% drop in December. Pharmaceutical retailers were the standout performer in January. Excessive rains in January could have caused this.

At the other end of the scale were clothing retailers. Rain was a factor again. Customers stayed indoors due to the weather. Clothing retailers had a 0.5% monthly drop in January.

Surprisingly, general dealers, who have the largest share of the retail market, only had 0.1% monthly rise. On a year ago basis, there was a 1.7% increase in January from a 4.0% jump in December.