CANBERRA: Australia’s retail sales report for December has missed expectations, coming in flat against forecasts for an increase of 0.5%. At 0.02%, it was the smallest monthly increase since July 2015, where sales decreased by 0.1%. Over the year sales grew by 4.19% to $24.759 billion, a slight deceleration on the 4.3% pace seen in the 12 months to November.
According to the ABS, sales increased in food retailing (0.8%), clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing (1.1%) and department stores (0.1%) in seasonally adjusted terms.
Offsetting those increases, sales fell for household goods retailing (-1.0%), other retailing (-0.9%) and cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services (-0.5%). Despite the large 1% fall in household goods sales, something that adds to evidence that housing market conditions continue to cool, the category still recorded the fastest annual percentage growth at 6.3%. This was followed by clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing and Department store sales at 4.7% and 4.6% respectively.
Suggesting that eating out is falling out of favour with consumers, sales in cafes, restaurants and takeaway food outlets recorded the slowest annual increase at 2.9%. Food retailing, the largest category by dollar spend, saw sales increase by 3.7% from 12 months earlier.
