Rising retail sales continue in October

By NZPA

Monday 9th December 2002

New Zealanders continued to go on a spending spree with retail sales in October growing at a stronger than expected 0.8 percent, Statistics New Zealand said today.

Seasonally adjusted retail sales increased in the month of October, rising 0.8 percent compared to the previous month.

That beat analysts' expectations of 0.5 percent. Excluding car sales and servicing there was a 1.1 percent increase in core retail sales.

The department said it followed a pattern of growth since May 1998.

October's rise follows a 0.1 percent decrease in September, although the September quarter was up 1.1 percent.

Actual sales in October were 8.6 percent ahead of the previous October, totalling $4.247 billion.

The improvement was widespread, with 13 out of 15 storetypes registering a sales rise. The two largest increases occurred in motor vehicle services (2.1 percent) and other store types.

Accommodation, hotels and liquor and motor vehicle retailing were the only areas to record a decline, the latter of which has fallen 1.4 percent since May.

Statistics NZ noted that the trend for car sales was weakening after a monthly growth of more than 1.5 percent in late 2001.

Regionally, the most properous retail area in October was Wellington (1.8 percent), but all six regions recorded high sales. North Island seasonally adjusted sales rose 0.9 percent and the South Island enjoyed an increase of 0.7 percent.

Also released today were updated trade figures for October, which showed a deficit of $2.481 billion -- $9 million lower than the estimate.

Imports outweighed exports by $696 million, or 28 percent of exports for the month, giving the largest deficit for October since 1989.

The deficit has been widening for the last five months.

However, October appears to be a bad month for exports -- deficits averaging 15.5 percent of exports have occured in that month for the last 10 years.

Updated export figures are valued at $31.429 billion, down 4.4 percent from October last year.

The main contributors were dairy products, fruit, fish and shellfish, although kiwifruit was lower because of an early end to the season.

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