Retailers: Holiday Sales Look Promising

With just two days until Christmas, Massachusetts retailers say this holiday shopping season could be better than expected.

Bill Rennie, the vice president of the Massachusetts Retailers Association, admits he hasn't seen all the numbers just yet, but says he expects a significant increase in holiday sales over last year.

"Sales are up from last year fairly significantly," Rennie said. "We had projected early on about a 4.3 percent increase in sales and we do expect to meet that number and hopefully do a little bit better."

Rennie expects final holiday sales numbers next week.

Despite solid gains this year, sales are still well below where they were four years ago.

"We've seen, from a lot of economic reports and economists telling us, that Massachusetts, you know, could be leading the nation out of the recession, and things are picking up here locally," Rennie said. "You know, it'll take some time to get back to the level of 2006, but hopefully we're on our way."