The Monthly Survey of Trade (PMC in the acronym in Portuguese), disclosed this Wednesday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), shows a 2.5% drop in retail sales in March, compared to February. It is the worst result for March since 2003.

The drop, driven by six of the eight activities surveyed, was not only worse because of the areas considered essential.

This is the case of the hypermarkets and supermarkets activity, which brings together food products, beverages, and tobacco, and grew 14.6%; and the pharmaceutical, medical, orthopedic, perfumery and cosmetics activity, which had an increase of 1.3% in sales.

According to the IBGE, hypermarkets, and supermarkets concentrated household spending in this pandemic period, which made this activity accumulate a 4.1% growth in the year.