KEY POINTS:
The amount of money spent in electronic card transactions in December was unchanged on a seasonally adjusted basis from November, figures out today from Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) show.
The seasonally adjusted value of the 95 million transactions last month was $4.6 billion, compared to 88 million transactions worth $4.3 billion in December 2006.
Seasonally adjusted sales for vehicle-related industries had strong growth in each of the three months between September and November, and to a lesser extent in December. Increases in fuel prices appeared to be the main cause for the growth, SNZ said.
The actual value of electronic card transactions (ECT) last month was $5.6b, 7.5 per cent higher than the $5.2b recorded for December 2006.
For the year to the end of December, 966m electronic card transactions were made, with a seasonally adjusted value of $53.4b. That compared with 882m transactions with a value of $49b for the December 2006 year, SNZ said.
The ECT series is drawn from data covering all debit and credit card spending with New Zealand-based merchants.
The trend in the series was 8.6 per cent higher last month than in December 2006, slightly down on the 8.9 per cent rise recorded for November and the 9 per cent rise for October.
From October 2004 to March 2007, the annual increase was generally between 9 and 11 per cent, but since last April the annual increase had slowed to 9 per cent or less, SNZ said.
As with the full ECT series, the retail subset was unchanged, after being adjusted for seasonal effects, in December compared to November.
But the core retail subset, which excludes vehicle-related industries, was up a seasonally adjusted 0.4 per cent in December from November.
- NZPA
