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RIYADH: The value of weekly point-of-sale transactions declined by 33.3 percent across all sectors in Saudi Arabia, according to the weekly POS report by the Saudi central bank, also known as SAMA.

Sales have been down for the sixth consecutive week, but the Eid-el Adha week was significantly lower than others.

The data covers POS transactions from the period between June 5 and July 16.

The three sectors that hold the highest weight in terms of sales value are restaurants and cafés, food and beverages, and miscellaneous goods and services, as per data compiled by Arab News.

From those sectors mentioned above, sales decreased in all three — restaurants and cafés by 13.2 percent, food and beverages by 24.5 percent, and miscellaneous goods and services by 38.2 percent over the last week.

Education shows the sharpest weekly decline in sales transactions of 92.6 percent, which could be ascribed to the start of summer holidays.

Similarly, clothing and footwear has exhibited a 61.1 weekly decline in sales — a consistent trend with its year-on-year decrease of 44.7 percent in May, according to Sama’s most recent monthly report.

Telecommunication, transportation, and health have also decreased by 47.8, 45.0, and 38.2 percent respectively.

Hotels are the only sector indicating a positive value of POS, as their value has increased by 7.2 percent over the past week.

As for the different cities of the Kingdom, all have experienced a weekly decline in POS transactions.

Those showing the highest decrease in value of pos transactions are Tabouk at 44.0 percent and Dammam at 41.1 percent.

Next in line is Hail at a decline of 38.3 percent weekly, followed by Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, which has decreased by 37.1 percent in value of POS transactions.

The second most populated city — Jeddah— met with the same fate, as the value of transactions decreased by 29.4 percent.

Madinah also displayed a massive decrease of 31.7 percent, while Makkah exhibited the smallest decrease of 22.3 percent.