Tesco has announced its half-year pre-tax profits of £1.42 billion, an increase of 1.5 per cent on a year earlier.

The group generated sales of more than £1 billion a week, coming to a total of £30.4 billion.

Like-for-like sales rose 2.7 per cent in the UK, which is slower than the growth achieved by its rivals such as Sainsbury’s. However, the firm says recent moves to enhance its Clubcard customer reward strategy are paying off, and says it has seen a “significant improvement” in its performance compared with its competitors.

The company also announced that it has created 6,500 jobs in the six month period, while chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said that Tesco was “well-placed for the global recovery”.

The supermarket chain’s statement said its strategy had “delivered pleasing growth in challenging times”.

Finance director Laurie McIlwee said falling inflation had taken the shine off the like-for-like figures, as the company passed a comparative period last year of high commodity prices.

He said Tesco had now started to see its sales figures run at around the same rate as the rest of the industry: “It has actually converged and performance is much stronger relative to the rest of the market,” he said.

He added that Tesco usually does better in a period of deflation because of the company’s “everyday” value products.

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