USD/CHF: Swiss retail sales rise 1% y/y

_iNVEZZ.com: Tuesday, April 8th:_ The Swiss Federal Statistical Office today reported that retail sales rose one percent year-on-year in February, following a 0.1 percent decline in January. Excluding fuel, core retail sales grew 1.1 percent after staying flat a month ago.

Retail sales of food, drinks and tobacco logged a jump in real turnover of 0.3 percent and the non-food sector registered positive growth of 1.1 percent.
Month-on-month, retail sales rose one percent, partially offsetting the two percent decline in January.
The Swiss unemployment rate remained unchanged for the 11th consecutive month at a seasonally adjusted 3.2 percent in March. The unadjusted data revealed a drop to 3.3 percent from 3.5 percent in the prior month.

The number of people registered for jobless benefits in March fell by 6,413 month-on-month to 142,846, although the unemployment rate remained 2.8 percent higher than in March 2013, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs announced today.
Swiss consumer prices remained unchanged in March, beating forecasts for a decline of 0.1 percent. According to official data from the Federal Statistical Office released yesterday, the consumer price index was unchanged from March 2013, after in February falling by 0.1 percent.

Meanwhile, the monthly inflation rate reached 0.4 percent compared to 0.1 percent in February, the fastest rate of increase since March 2012.
The Swiss National Bank last month predicted that consumer prices would remain unchanged this year and increase by 0.4 percent in 2015. The bank stressed that reduced global inflation, as well as the strong Swiss franc, were the main reasons for the delay in the rise of consumer prices in the country.

The USD/CHF has fallen so far this week after finding strong resistance at the 89-day simple moving average, which has been preventing the price from going higher since early February.
The pair is currently trading at 0.8858, down 0.18 percent for the day and 0.60 percent for the week.
The price earlier today hit its lowest level since 3 April, at 0.8849.