BERLIN, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Despite "costly preventive measures," the German retail sector lost around 4.3 billion euros (4.9 billion U.S. dollars) worth of goods last year, of which 3.75 billion euros due to theft, according to a study published by the EHI Retail Institute in Cologne on Tuesday.
"Every day the German retail trade suffers a loss of almost 7.7 million euros from customer theft," according to the EHI.
In addition, last year there were employee thefts worth an estimated 1 billion euros. Disappearing goods worth 350 million euros were attributable to suppliers and service personnel.
"In the end it is not only the companies that pay, but also the retail customers. The loss has to be recouped in part by retailers through price increases," managing director of the German retail association (HDE) Stefan Genth told Xinhua on Tuesday.
According to the study by the German retail institute, spirits were the item most often stolen in the German food retail sector.
Perfumes and cosmetics were the items most often stolen from drugstores while high-quality branded clothing, jeans and sneakers were top steals in the fashion industry.
"In the retail sector, what is not firmly nailed to the ground continues to be stolen," noted Frank Horst, security expert at the EHI.
At the same time, according to the EHI, the number of shopliftings reported in Germany fell by 4.1 percent last year to a total of 339,021 cases.
The number of "serious shopliftings" in Germany, however, had almost tripled in the last 12 years.
German politicians needed to "improve the staffing and equipment of the security and judicial authorities, expand the scope of penalties for shoplifting and reduce the scope for the judiciary to dismiss cases," stressed HDE managing director Genth.
In the fight against theft, German retailers primarily relied on training their employees, while four out of five companies also used camera and video technology to monitor their salesrooms.
In addition, more than half of German companies secured at least parts of their goods electronically, according to the study.
The EHI study authors estimated that every year, over 23 million shopliftings, each with a value of 100 euros, remained undiscovered in Germany's retail sector.
The German government needed to provide "a clear stop sign against shoplifting. Shoplifting is not a petty offence," Genth told Xinhua.
According to recent figures by the German retail association, retail sales in Germany totaled 525 billion euros last year.
