New Zealand consumers spent more on durables using their debit and credit cards in August 2013, Statistics New Zealand said in a report.
The government agency said spending on durables boosted the value of core retail transactions, which increased 1.1 percent in August 2013, after adjusting for seasonal effects.
"This month’s increase in core retail was driven by durables and was the largest since June 2011," acting industry and labour statistics manager Tehseen Islam said.
The two largest industry movements were: durables, up USD29 million (2.8 percent), consumables, up USD9 million (0.6 percent).
Fuel, which had large rises in each of the three preceding months, was up just USD5 million (0.6 percent). The remaining industries had rises of around USD4 million or less. Spending across all retail industries (which includes the motor vehicle-related industries) was up 0.8 percent in August 2013.
The value of total card transactions was up 0.4 percent.
All of the trends for the total series have generally been increasing since October 2002. Since March 2013, the trends for total spending and total retail spending have been increasing at a faster rate than the trend for core retail spending.
In unadjusted terms, there were 113 million transactions across all industries in August, with an average value of $51. The total amount spent across all transactions was USD5.8 billion.