Car spending surges $16m
Retail card spending on motor vehicles increased by $16 million – or 2.7 per cent – in the September quarter, when compared with the numbers seen in the previous quarter.
It took the industry’s seasonally adjusted figure for the three months to the end of September to $600m, the highest quarterly level since June 2024 when it reached $619m.
The latest figure was also up by 2.4 per cent from the $586m achieved in the September 2024 quarter, according to data from Stats NZ
As for last month alone, the total spend on motor vehicles using retail cards was $195m. This was down by $5.2m, or 2.6 per cent, from $200m in August.
September’s total also represented a drop of $2m, or one per cent, from the same month of 2024 when $197m was splurged on motor vehicles using electronic cards.
The latest seasonally adjusted values show all retail categories except hospitality suffered a month-on-month drop in retail card spending.
Consumer spending on fuel dropped $2.5m, or 0.5 per cent, to $473m over the same period.
The overall total forked out by consumers in the retail industries decreased by $34m, or 0.5 per cent, to $6.89 billion.
In actual terms, cardholders made 168 million transactions across all industries in September, with an average value of $54 per transaction. The total amount spent using cards was $9.08b.
