First release of Wholesale Trade Survey on new industry classification

Release of the December 2010 results for the Wholesale Trade Survey (WTS) continues implementation of a new industry classification, Statistics New Zealand said today. The Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification 2006 (ANZSIC06) updates the coverage of industry statistics and is currently being implemented across Statistics NZ's outputs.

For the wholesale sector the largest change is the reclassification of some petroleum industry businesses to manufacturing.

After adjusting for seasonal effects, total wholesale trade sales rose 2.0 percent ($378 million) in the December 2010 quarter.

Rises were recorded for three of the six wholesale trade industries:

• basic materials wholesaling – up 6.9 percent ($278 million)
• motor vehicle and motor-vehicle parts retailing – up 9.9 percent ($147 million)
• machinery and equipment wholesaling – up 0.9 percent ($34 million).

The biggest fall was in the other goods wholesaling industry, down 2.0 percent ($67 million).

The trend in total wholesale trade sales has risen 11.2 percent since the September 2009 quarter.

Statistics NZ would like to reassure people that no data was lost during the 22 February Christchurch earthquake. Different methods than usual were used to calculate quarterly GDP, but the same respondent data was used as in this release of WTS results. We do not expect any revision to GDP be significant (to be released with the March 2011 quarter GDP results).

Users should note that GDP will continue to be presented using ANZSIC 1996 until mid 2012, so coverage of the industries differs from those in this WTS release.

Geoff Bascand 1 April 2011

Government Statistician