Paymark data shows strong December throughout NZ

Paymark data shows strong December throughout New Zealand

Auckland, Monday, 4 January 2016:

Paymark’s initial December data shows strong spending growth throughout the country for December - up almost 8% to $5.493 billion for retail’s busiest month of the year.

The Bay of Plenty, Marlborough, Auckland and Northland and Southland saw the strongest growth in the country with the Bay of Plenty breaking into double figure growth at 10.1% over the same month in 2014.

There are a number of influencing factors that may be considered, including the Reserve Bank cutting the OCR by 0.25% to 2.5% per annum in early December as well as continued growth across the entire GDP.

Lower petrol prices to 18 December (4.8% below the same four weeks in 2014 based on the latest data from MBIE) were offset by strong accommodation figures, likely to be a result of increased visitor arrivals to New Zealand(+11.1% for November 2015 over the same month a year earlier, according to Statistics NZ).

The number of transactions across the country was also up by 8.2% year on year. December saw 106.05 million transactions conducted on the Paymark network, which accounts for more than 75% of New Zealand’s EFTPOS terminals.

ENDS

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