Consumer spending remained below last year’s levels in August and September, as households faced higher petrol prices, rising interest rates and bad weather.<\/p>\n
New data from payments network Paymark shows core retail spending totalled $3.7 billion in August, down 1.8 percent on the same month last year.<\/p>\n
Spending reached $3.57b in September – a year-on-year fall of 1.3 percent.<\/p>\n
Paymark chief sales officer Bruce Proffit said consumers had faced three “tough knocks” that may have contributed to the slowdown.<\/p>\n
“Firstly, petrol prices started rising again in July and jumped sharply in mid-September.<\/p>\n
“Spending through Paymark at fuel outlets was running 35 percent ahead of year ago levels in the week ending 30 September, largely due to higher prices but also due to more transactions,” said Proffit.<\/p>\n
“Secondly, interest rates have also risen over the last three months, due both to tighter New Zealand monetary policy and to higher international long-term interest rates.”<\/p>\n
Proffit said cold, wet and windy weather across much of the country on the final weekend of September may also have kept shoppers at home.<\/p>\n
The pressure was particularly clear in non-food retail.<\/p>\n
Spending in that category was 0.9 percent above year-ago levels in the first seven days of July, but 7.1 percent below them in the final seven days of September.<\/p>\n
Paymark defines non-food spending as core retail spending excluding grocery and liquor stores, hotels, bars, caf\u00e9s and restaurants.<\/p>\n
“This shows New Zealand in 2026 is off to a slower start to the usual end-of-year surge as we approach the pre-Christmas shopping season,” Proffit said.<\/p>\n
Marlborough was the weakest-performing region in September, with core retail spending down 9.7 percent on a year earlier.<\/p>\n
It was followed by the West Coast, down 3.3 percent, Wellington, down 2.4 percent, and Bay of Plenty, down 2.2 percent.<\/p>\n
Gisborne recorded the strongest annual growth, up 3.1 percent, followed by Hawke’s Bay at 2.8 percent. Whanganui, Palmerston North, South Canterbury and Southland also posted modest increases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consumer spending remained below last year’s levels in August and September, as households faced higher petrol prices, rising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-620980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}