Supermarkets & Hypermarkets hit index 161 in Jan 2025, while Department Stores languished at 61 in Feb 2022 – a yawning gap that has narrowed only mar

Contains information from "Retail Sales Index, (2017 = 100), At Current Prices, Monthly" accessed on 4 July 2026 from Singapore Department of Statistics (data.gov.

sg (Singapore Department of Statistics)) which is made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0 (https://beta.data.gov.sg/open-data-licence).

from Singapore Singapore’s retail sales are painting a picture of a consumer who is spending generously on groceries and restaurant meals while all but walking straight past the entrance of the department store.

That split-screen reality, captured in a government data series tracking monthly sales through December 2025, is giving mall operators and policymakers a conundrum to chew on as the economy hums along: the island’s shopping habit is bifurcating, and the old anchor tenants may never fully recover.

A retail recovery running at two speeds At the top of the leaderboard, Supermarkets & Hypermarkets notched an index reading of 161 in January 2025 — their highest point in a series that stretches back to November 2021.

Department Stores, by contrast, bottomed out at a meagre 55 in February 2022 and still could not break back above the 100 baseline even by the final month of 2025, when the sector recorded a relatively anemic 97.3 .

The divergence is stark: one category has been running more than 60 points above the 2017 reference year, the other is effectively stuck in contraction territory.

The quiet rise of food and drink spending While supermarket sales grab headlines, the Food & Alcohol segment has quietly turned into the outperformer. In December 2025, the index hit 133.

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