Inside Retail presents the Australian Retail Index.

The index gives a quick overview of retail statistics in four key categories; fashion and accessories, furniture and homewares, sporting and recreational, and other.

Key retail statistics are shown weekly, with yearly comparisons available.

Retailers across the country will be breathing a sigh of relief after retail sales growth returned to positive territory last week. Overall sales showed an increase of 7.35 per cent with Queensland leading the charge with a growth of 13.41 per cent. The news wasn’t this positive for all states with Western Australia (15.32 per cent down) and Victoria (3.56 per cent down) bucking the trend and returning negative results. In each of these states, a specific sector dragged down the overall results, rather than being an overall slump in retail.

Consumers clearly emptied out their wallets during the Christmas trading period, as there has been a marked increase in spending on credit, rather than cash, over the last one to two weeks, compared to the six month trend. The good news is that this follows a cycle which we have seen in previous years, so retailers can again make plans based on the historical data showing in the Index.

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