Market Commentary and Intraday News

New Zealand Retail Credit Card Spending -0.6%

223 days ago

(RTTNews) - Retail credit card spending in New Zealand contracted a seasonally adjusted 0.6 percent on month in September, Statistics New Zealand said on Tuesday

That was shy of forecasts for a 0.3 percent decline following the downwardly revised 2.7 percent drop in August.

"Card spending fell in all four core retail industries this month, with consumables having the largest fall," acting industry and labor statistics manager Tehseen Islam said. "This is a turnaround from August when all the core retail industries had rises."

Overall credit card spending also declined 0.6 percent on month after shedding a downwardly revised 2.1 percent in the previous month.

Fuel retailing rose just 0.2 percent (NZ$2 million) in September, following a large rise in August.

Transactions in core industries were down 0.9 percent after rising 0.9 percent a month earlier. Consumables had the largest fall of any industry, down 0.6 percent.

The unadjusted value of core retail transactions was up 2.3 percent on year.

The trends for both the core retail and total series remain positive but the rate of growth has weakened in recent months. The retail trend is also positive but has eased since May.

Upon the release of the data, the New Zealand dollar held steady against major currencies, trading near 0.8195 against the U.S. dollar, 64.19 versus the yen, 1.5836 against the euro and 1.2446 versus the Australian dollar.

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