Electronic sales point to further flatness in the domestic economy.An up-tick in sales, driven by Rugby World Cup ticket sales, was anticipated by economists in the July electronic transactions figures, released this morning by Statistics New Zealand.Inst
Electronic sales point to further flatness in the domestic economy.
An up-tick in sales, driven by Rugby World Cup ticket sales, was anticipated by economists in the July electronic transactions figures, released this morning by Statistics New Zealand.
Instead, total transactions fell 0.2%, with “core” sales – those excluding vehicles and fuel – up 0.7% on June.
The main drivers of the core increase were consumable goods.
Those figures though related to the number of transactions. The value of sales, seasonally adjusted, fell 0.2% for core retail.
The trend for both value and volume of core retail has been flat since the start of the year. A further indication of a mood of pronounced caution amongst consumers is the number of credit card transactions –these are continuing to decline and for the year to July were 43.9% of transactions, the lowest proportion since the series began.
Friday sees retail sales figures released but these are for the June quarter, rather than the month of July, and most market economists are picking a small increase, of somewhere around 0.2-0.6% in sale values.
