Retail sales, a proxy for household spending, decreased 0.5 percent in March month-on-month in the 19-country currency bloc, Eurostat said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a much smaller decrease of 0.1 percent.
Yearly figures were also lower than expected, with sales up 2.1 percent, below market forecasts of a 2.5 percent rise.
The fall in March sales was partly offset by an upward revision of data for February. Eurostat said on Wednesday that in February sales rose 0.3 percent on a monthly basis and 2.7 percent year-on-year. It had previously estimated an increase of 0.2 percent monthly and 2.4 percent yearly.
On a monthly basis, retail sales of food, drinks and tobacco products dropped 1.3 percent in March, the biggest fall among all the categories.
Sales of non-food products, excluding automotive fuels, went down 0.5 percent month-on-month. Purchases of fuel for cars also dropped 0.4 percent on a monthly basis.
Among the largest euro zone economies, Germany posted a 1.1 percent monthly drop of retail sales and France recorded a decrease of 0.7 percent. In Spain, sales increased 0.4 percent on a monthly basis in March.
Euro zone retail sales fall more than expected in March
04 May 2016
Read: 866
Euro zone retail sales fell more than expected in March against February as consumers cut purchases of food, drinks and tobacco, the European Union`s statistics office said on Wednesday.
