NATCHEZ — For the second month in a row sales tax revenues for Natchez were down.

After reporting a 3.58 percent drop in December from the previous year, January’s sales tax numbers indicate a 1.98 percent drop from January 2008.

City Clerk Donnie Holloway said the city collected $390,258 in sales tax revenue in January compared to $397,781 in January of last year.

The city collected $519,000 in sales tax revenues in December 2008, down from $538,000 in December 2007.

Holloway said the $7,500 drop from January to January was a reflection of the economic downturn that is plaguing the entire country.

“(It’s) just a result of the overall economic situation everyone one is in,” he said.

Holloway said, given the circumstances, he wasn’t surprised by the collections.

“I thought they might even be a little lower than what there are,” he said.

But despite the past two months reports, Holloway said Natchez is still ahead of the pace of last year’s collections by 4.5 percent.

And though Natchez is feeling the effects of the national economic situation, Holloway said things could be worse.

“We have been fortunate,” he said. “Some cities have been losing revenue long before we started.”

He said he spoke with officials in others cities in January, and those cities were experiencing 3 or 4 percent drops in sales tax revenue.

While he is pleased that the city is still exceeding last year’s collections, Holloway isn’t sure when to expect the sales tax revenues to stop falling. He said he wouldn’t be surprised to see collections to continue to drop.

Mississippi sales tax revenues are collected two months after the fact; meaning sales tax numbers for February will be reported in April.

“We’re just going month by month just seeing how the economy is going to affect us,” he said. “There are a lot of things happening that don’t sound good at the present time.”