Electronic card spending up in March

A mix of rises and falls across industry groups gave a 0.5 percent increase in the total value of electronic card transactions in March 2011, Statistics New Zealand said today. The value of transactions, adjusted for seasonal effects, rose in three industries, but fell in five.

Core retail (which excludes the motor vehicle-related industries) increased by 0.9 percent in March 2011. This increase was driven by the durables industry, which rose 2.5 percent, after a 2.4 percent fall in February 2011. The durables industry includes furniture, hardware, and appliance retailing.

When the two vehicle related-industries are included, the value of transactions in retail increased 1.3 percent in March 2011. One of them, fuel retailing, was up by 2.1 percent and has increased in each of the last eight months.

Transaction values in the two industries that fall outside retail both decreased in March 2011, resulting in an increase of 0.5 percent in the total value of transactions. This follows a similar increase of 0.4 percent in February 2011.

Trends for the value of transactions in the total and retail series have been increasing since January 2009. The trend for core retail has generally been increasing since the series began in October 2002, but it has been easing since August 2010.

This information release includes data for Canterbury. However, as the data is not broken down by region we are not able to separate or estimate the impact of the recent earthquakes on the data.

Geoff Bascand 11 April 2011

Government Statistician