Card spending continued to rise in September. Photo / Getty Images
Card spending continued to rise in September. Photo / Getty Images
Retail card spending rose in September as consumers continued to put Covid restrictions behind them.
Card spending was up 1.4 per cent when adjusted for seasonal effects.
Spending rose across a majority of retail industries, with the largest contribution coming from consumables, up $20 million (0.8 per cent), Stats NZsaid.
Consumables include items such as groceries and liquor.
"People continued to spend more on items such as food and liquor. This is the third consecutive monthly increase for consumables," StatsNZ business performance manager Ricky Ho said.
"We've seen food prices going up in the past few months, which can impact card spending on groceries."
In actual terms, total card spending reached $8.6 billion, up 32.9 per cent from September 2021.
"Spending on hospitality services and durables made the largest contribution to the annual increase, as spending continued to rise and recover from the impact of having New Zealand under alert levels 3 and 4 in September last year," Ho said.
Durables include non-essential items such as furniture, hardware and appliances.
Much of this month's gain was again related to an increase in spending on hospitality, said Westpac senior economist Satish Ranchhod.
"Spending in the hospitality sector has been boosted by the reopening of the borders and the return of international visitors, including a flurry of visitors from Australia in recent months," he said.
"Spending in the hospitality sector is now back around the levels that we saw prior to the pandemic."
The past month also saw a pickup in spending on groceries and apparel.
On the downside, spending on durables (like furnishings and appliances) has now fallen for four months in a row, he said.
Yesterday Kiwibank electronic card data showed spending rose 3.1 per cent in the September quarter.
A big jump in spending on entertainment and a broad shift towards spending on services, and away from goods, underpinned the trend.
Over the quarter, total services spending expanded by 11 per cent. Total spending on goods fell slightly, declining 0.7 per cent.
Entertainment spending rose 10 per cent over the September quarter.
Spending on sporting events was especially strong, up almost 5 per cent.
Housing-related spending continued to fall over the quarter, down 4.5 per cent.
New Zealanders were spending less on the home and taking fewer trips to hardware stores.
The value of petrol spending fell 4 per cent, due to a combination of falling prices and fewer visits to the petrol station.
Satish Ranchhod, senior economist at Westpac Bank. Photo / NZME
"Now that the borders are open and international tourist dollars are flowing back in, overall demand in the economy is proving to be resilient in the face of interest rate hikes, Ranchhod said.
"And that means the RBNZ still needs to do more to dampen inflation pressures. Consistent with that, we recently revised up our forecast for the Official Cash Rate and now expect it to peak at 4.5 per cent, with 50bp hikes in both November and February."
