Retail sales fell, but building approvals remained strong in December, especially for private houses, a sign the building and home owning boom still has some way to run.
Both figures will have no impact on the RBA’s thinking because the stats are for two months ago.
The bank is off doing new soundings with industry for the next board meeting in March.
Next Thursday’s unemployment figures for December will be much more important when released next week.
And later today we get updated forecasts from the RBA for growth and inflation for 2010 and 2011.
Retail sales fell 0.7% in the month of December, as total building approvals jumped 3.1% and houses 2.2%, a sort of tie in terms of the approach to analysing these figures with the Reserve Bank’s thinking on interest rates.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that while sales fell 0.7% from November (up 1.5% in November) there was still a strongish contribution to the December quarter with positive growth of 1.1%. (A fall of 0.7% in the September quarter.)
The ABD said sales fell, seasonally adjusted, across four retail industry groups: Department Stores (down 3.5%), Clothing, Footwear & Other Personal Accessory Retailing (off 1.9%), Food Retailing (down 1.3%) and Household Goods Retailing (-0.3%). "Sales rose in Cafes, Restaurants & Takeaway Food Services (2.5%). Other Retailing (0.0%) remained flat."
"South Australia (-3.7%) recorded the largest fall in sales in December, followed by Tasmania (-2.0%), Victoria (-1.0%), Queensland (-0.6%), the Northern Territory (-0.4%), the Australian Capital Territory (-0.4%) and Western Australia (-0.1%)," the ABS said.
For the building sector, a different result in December after the softness seen in November.
The ABS said that the number of approvals for private sector houses rose 3.1% in December 2009 following a fall last month.
The ABS said Victoria saw a 4.6% rise, Queensland 2.2%, South Australia half a per cent and Western Australian up 3.3%.
Overall, the number of dwellings approved in Australia rose 2.2% with Tasmania (up 21.7%) and Victoria (up 11.1%) recording the largest increases.
The ABS said there was a rise in the number of approvals for private sector dwellings other than houses (up 9.1%) in December.
However, the value of total building approved fell 3.7% in December with non-residential building approvals down 9.4% but the value of approved new residential buildings increased by 3.0%, another solid sign.
