Trade figures released by The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) have revealed that Australians spent over one billion dollars a day over the Christmas 2016 period, a first for the industry.
Retail sales in Original terms for the Christmas trade period - the second half of November and the entirety of December – showed that spending totalled $46.58 billion in 2016, an increase of 4.4% from the Christmas 2015 trade period ($44.63 billion).
New South Wales topped the states, spending over $15 billion, with Victoria and Queensland following with $12 and $9.2 billion respectively.
The National Retail Association (NRA) CEO Dominique Lamb said the figures were in line with the associations earlier prediction of $46.5 billion.
“The NRA was always confident that retail would enjoy a merry Christmas and we are delighted that we were spot on with our projection and that retail enjoyed a record spend for Christmas 2016.
“These results should also give retailers and employees confidence as we head into 2017.”
Australian retail also saw a rise of 0.3% in the trend estimate for December 2016, as well as a seasonally adjusted rise of 0.9% for the December quarter.
All states and territories recorded a rise in trend terms for December 2016, with Victoria, NSW and Queensland each growing by 0.3%.
Clothing, footwear and accessories saw trend growth of 0.3%, while department stores and other retailing grew by 0.1%.