Shoes, booze lead sales revival

Sales of footwear jumped 20 per cent in July as overall national spending showed a slight increase. Photo / Martin Sykes

Shoes and booze are proving to be the mid-winter winners with shoppers - providing another glimmer of hope that tough times may be fading.

Figures issued yesterday show sales of footwear and liquor jumped 24 per cent and 20 per cent respectively in July.

Overall, New Zealand shoppers spent $3.48 billion on their credit and debit cards last month - 1.1 per cent more than the same time last year.

Data released yesterday by Paymark, a network that processes about 70 per cent of the country's electronic retail transactions, showed the slight increase after a "static" few months of spending.

The statistics show 69.9 million electronic card transactions nationally in July - up 8.5 per cent on July last year.

Paymark chief executive Simon Tong said it was positive to see spending pick up, even if it was minimal.

"We have heard a bit about 'green shoots' starting to emerge from a number of economists over the last week, and our July spending data seems to support this. It will be interesting to see whether this continues in the coming months."

Spending at petrol stations was down 20 per cent - which was attributed to lower petrol prices this year and is listed as the major factor behind low overall growth.

Spending on furniture was down 4 per cent and spending on appliances was down 1 per cent.

Shoppers spent more in Auckland, the Bay of Plenty and Marlborough towards the end of July.

These spending sprees lifted the monthly growth rate in Marlborough for all sectors to 5.2 per cent - the biggest national increase.

Gisborne recorded the largest monthly drop in spending, down 3.2 per cent.

The figures come less than a month after a Statistics New Zealand retail trade survey which revealed that May produced the biggest monthly growth in more than 18 months.

However, this was put down to the early onset of winter which sent shoppers to stores to buy items to keep warm.

BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander said at the time that he did not believe that consumer spending would continue at the same rate, but that the recession in New Zealand was probably over.

Mr Alexander said yesterday that while people were starting to spend more, there were still many retailers struggling.

"I do believe that we are seeing an improvement in retail spending but it will be patchy going forward.

"But at the same time you will still get shops closing down, sitting there empty because people have maybe hung on for two years of weak spending ... they need a boom to bail them out and there's no retail boom coming along."