Not so merry Christmas for Aussie retailers: data

SYDNEY, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- After three straight months of growth including November's bumper 1.3 percent increase, Australian retail spending for the month of December has fallen well short of expectations on Tuesday.

With most expecting a decline of around 0.2 percent for the final month of the year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics' seasonally adjusted retail sales figures were down 0.5 percent, totaling 20.60 billion U.S. dollars.

Among the biggest losers, household goods dived 2.6 percent, department stores lost 0.6 percent and categories like stationary, used goods and non-store retailers sank almost 5 percent.

As a result, the Aussie dollar dropped from 78.85 U.S. cents before the read at 11:30 (AEDT), to 78.68 U.S. cents immediately after.

But despite the doom and gloom, Capital Economics chief Australia and New Zealand economist, Paul Dales explained to Xinhua that the data isn't actually "too bad".

"I think it's just due to people shifting around their timing of sales," he said

"For example if you wanted to buy something, it makes sense to do it in November during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales when there were lots of good deals around."

"So I think people have just brought their spending forward and when you look at the two months on average, it gives you an increase of 0.4 percent, which admittedly isn't great but it's much better than then average of zero percent over the previous five months." Enditem