Vehicle spending slides
Retail card spending on motor vehicles fell by $5.3 million – or 2.8 per cent – in June, when compared with the numbers seen in the month prior.
It took the industry’s seasonally adjusted figure for last month to $184m. This is the third consecutive drop and the lowest monthly total of the past two years, according to figures from Stats NZ.
June’s total also represented a drop of $36m, or 16.4 per cent, from the same month of 2023 when $220m was splurged on motor vehicles using electronic cards.
When comparing the June quarter with the March quarter of this year, spending on vehicles dropped $61m or 9.8 per cent.
The latest seasonally adjusted values show all retail categories except consumables suffered a month-on-month drop in retail card spending in June.
Consumer spending on fuel dropped $24m, or 4.6 per cent, to $505m over the same period.
The overall total forked out by consumers in the retail industries decreased by $40m, or 0.6 per cent, to $6.4 billion.
In actual terms, cardholders made 157m transactions across all industries in June, with an average value of $55 per transaction. The total amount spent using cards was $8.5 billion.
