Australian Dec 2010 retail sales – fading stimulus
Posted on 07 February 2010
Unsurprising that retail sales are fading as the cash hand-outs roll-off and higher interest rates work their magic.
No wonder the big retailers were on the conservative side in the recent half yearly reporting (eg. see article by Malcolm Maiden) as department stores sales and household goods looked particularly soft – with our penchant for good food holding up the aggregate result.
I’ve overlaid in the chart above and the one that follows – a retail sales number for January 2010 that delivers the long-term-average-CPI-adjusted-monthly-growth-rate of 0.20%. It requires a relatively optimistic 2% real growth in the retail sales as against those of January 2009.
The point being that, even given a reasonable January, the momentum in retail sales is all to the downside. The flipside to the government’s prodding of the Australian consumer into spending more and borrowing more is that there is less in the kitty…
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