SYDNEY: Australian retail sales bounced in October after months of lukewarm demand, a bright sign for spending in the upcoming holiday season as Amazon.com Inc opened its doors for business Down Under. A shopper looks at clothes on sale at a retail store located in a shopping mall in central Sydney, Australia, March 19, 2017. REUTERS/Steven Saphore
The retail behemoth started taking online orders on Tuesday, ending breathless speculation about its arrival in the world’s twelfth biggest economy.
Tuesday’s data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed retail sales rose 0.5 percent in October from the previous month, the strongest since May and above expectations for a 0.3 percent increase. September sales had only inched up by a revised 0.1 percent. Sales were up across every sector with clothing and eating out particularly strong.
Australia’s A$26 billion ($19.8 billion) brick-and-mortar retailers have been struggling amid cutthroat competition and as relentless price discounts fail to entice customers facing paltry wage growth and mountains of debt.
There are fears Amazon’s entry could further stifle traditional retailers and suppress prices and inflation. Oddly, the ABS does not yet include online data in its headline retail series even though they account for more than 7 percent of total sales.
That means Amazon will not feature in the monthly figures, though internet sales are easily the fastest growing segment of the market.
The ABS does have an experimental estimate of online retail turnover and that jumped 11.3 percent in October to almost match last year’s Christmas sales in dollar terms.
The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) expects Amazon to inject new life into the country’s sluggish retail sector, helping local chains expand their customer base.
“With the advancement in digital technologies across the retail sector, we believe online retail sales will account for 13 percent of total retail sales in the next five years,” said ARA’s executive director Russell Zimmerman.
