Pharmacies decelerate less than retail

One of the more resilient retail segments in times of crisis, the pharmacies have lost pace of expansion, but the deceleration occurs at a pace below the trade slowdown.
In the pharmacies, high in sales was 10.8% from January to March, versus growth of 13.8% in the same range of 2014-fall of three percentage points, according to the index of Retail Expanded, Cielo/Cielo cards, which gathers information from transactions in 1.6 million points of sale in the country. In April, the sector grew 12.5% and 11% in May.
Data on sales of trade from January to March showed high of 1.3% in the first quarter, versus a high of 7.6% over the same period of the previous year. The percentages were deflated by the IPCA/IBGE.
"Pharmacies are less sensitive to changes in credit than the losses of income and employment. And even when these indicators worsen, is a segment with a "shield" for sell essential products and benefit from the aging of the population, "said Rodrigo Baggi, Economist at Consulting Trends.
Figures from the Brazilian Association of Pharmacies and Drugstores (Abrafarma) show that the sector closed last year with a high of 13.85% in sales and no medicines boosted performance, with growth of 19%. Already in this early 2015, from January to March sales rose 10.4%, (had grown almost 17% in the first three months of last year) and no drugs were discharged of 13.44% (versus 20% in the previous year).
In search of Cielo, pharmacies have the slightest slowdown among the 24 retail segments analyzed. The research considers the electronic transactions with debit and credit card. The base of the Cielo 54% of copper transactions in the country.
For the Manager of the intelligence area of Cielo, Gabriel Mariotto, the organic expansion of networks of drugstores in certain markets such as the Northeast, helped keep the growth in double digits this year. The units have gained strength and these new stores began to compute your sales annualized form in recent sales indices