Electronic card spending up in December

After adjusting for seasonal effects, the value of retail electronic card transactions increased 0.7 percent in December 2009, Statistics New Zealand said today.

Automotive fuel retailing has been the main contributor to increases in this series since July 2009. Core retail (which excludes the motor vehicle-related industries) also increased in December 2009, by 0.4 percent. This increase was driven by the consumables industry (which includes food, liquor, and chemist retailing).

When the non-retail industries are included, the total value of transactions was up by a lesser 0.3 percent, following the previous flat result (up just 0.1 percent) in November 2009. The non-retail industries (which include services such as travel and health, and wholesaling) were down 1.4 percent in December 2009.

Trends for the value of transactions in the total, retail, and core retail series have all been increasing since January 2009. Latest figures indicate that the growth rate for the retail series has picked up since August 2009, while the growth rate for the total series appears to have eased since then. For the core retail series, the trend has been comparatively flat in recent months, up 1.0 percent since June 2009.

Credit card use accounted for 44.6 percent of total transactions in the December 2009 quarter, an increase on the two previous quarters. This follows a general decline since the March 2008 quarter when the proportion was 47.7 percent.

The actual value of transactions in core retail was $4.2 billion, up 3.6 percent from December 2008.