A 1.9% decline in the first quarter sales was declared by the French supermarket giant Casino Guichard Perrachon.  The decline was in turn followed by decreasing costs of petrol and food coupled with inflation and weak consumer demand.
  
The firm reported first-quarter sales of 6.73 billion euros ($8.82 billion) this Wednesday.  The approximate estimate varies from 6.67 billion to 6.8 billion euros.  The firm has more than 10,000 stores spread across 10 countries and the decline in the commodity prices are visibly contributing to the decline.

In addition to this, rival Carrefour reported a 2.8 percent fall in the first-quarter sales last week. The declines are attributed to the leap year day having been added to the first quarter which was approximately timed for Easter last year; however, the Easter holidays this time has been during the second quarter.

The economists press that the French would experience a downfall between 1.9 percent and 4.3 percent because of the financial recession caused. The international sales in
South America and Asia will fall by 1.5 percent with an expected increase of 1.5 percent.

The underperformance of the Casino Guichard shares and the decline in their values is in part because of its DJ Stoxx European Retail Index falling down by 24 percent compared to last year.  The price decline is also woven around the concerns over the 4.85-billion-euro debt pile and percentage of money borrowed from the Groupe Rallye.

As a measure to bring down their debts to a considerable level, in March 2009, Casino Guichard have asserted their plans, which relates to selling their 1 billion euros of assets and 334 million euros of property to create proceeds to be passed on to stake holders.