Türkiye's retail sales volume, a marker of growing consumer spending, fell 6.5% month-on-month in February after powerful twin earthquakes hit numerous provinces and affected 13 million people.

Automotive fuel sales posted the most significant decline of 8.8%, while non-food (except automotive fuel) dove 8.7% from a month ago in February.

Food, drinks and tobacco sales inched down 0.3% during the same period.

Electronic goods and furniture sales slipped the most among non-food items, down 11.1% every month this February.

As force majeure was declared and VAT declarations on which retail sales indices calculation is based were postponed in quake-hit provinces, TurkStat said that alternative data sources such as e-invoice and e-archive invoice data and statistical methods were used to fill in missing observations in the February calculations.

The share of these estimated observations in the total is 3.76%, TurkStat added.

Over 50,000 people died on Feb. 6 when magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes struck southern and southeastern Turkish provinces.

Annually, Türkiye's retail sales volume jumped 21.5% in February.