October’s Retail Sales Index report will be released “within the week”, a government minister promised yesterday.

Typically, both the October and November Retail Sales Index reports, produced by the Department of Statistics, would have been released by now. The December 2017 Retail Sales Index report was released on February 15, 2018.

A monthly Retail Sales Index update has not been released since the September 2018 report, which showed a seventh successive month of declining sales volume, was released in mid-December.

Walton Brown, Minister for the Cabinet Office, which has responsibility for the Department of Statistics, said: “We are behind and we are going to get those [October figures] out very shortly, within the week. The delay is in getting the report prepared to get it out to the public. It’s a technical delay in getting the report prepared.”

Mr Brown said the delay was not due to a reluctance on the part of Government to release negative economic data.

“No, no, no, we’re not withholding any bad news,” he said.