Feb 15 - Swedish budget fashion giant Hennes & Mauritz said on Tuesday sales at its established stores rose one percent in January in local currencies from a year earlier.

H&M Spring/Summer '11 collection (photo by Hasse Nielsen)

That roughly matched the mean forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts which had been for a 0.4 percent rise.

H&M said total sales, which includes stores opened in the past year, rose 9 percent in local currencies in January, the second month of its financial year.

That was in line with the 9 percent rise in the Jan. 1-25 period that H&M reported in its fiscal full-year 2009/10 report.

H&M, the world's third-biggest clothes retailer by sales after Spanish Inditex with its Zara brand and U.S. Gap, does not release absolute sales figures, only the percentage change in local currencies. It does not comment on sales figures.