The rising cost of petrol helped to push up debit and credit card spending in New Zealand's retail trades by 0.4 percent last month, the government statistics agency announced Friday.
Spending on fuel, which was up by 39 million NZ dollars (31.17 million U.S. dollars), or 5.3 percent, boosted the value of total retail transactions, according to Statistics New Zealand.
"Fuel had the largest rise in card spending in July," industry and labor statistics manager Blair Cardno said in a statement.
"This was the third month in a row where we've seen a large monthly rise in the fuel industry."
The other large industry movements included durables, which were down 15 million NZ dollars, or 1.4 percent, and apparel, which was down 10 million NZ dollars, or 3.3 percent.
Core retail spending, which excludes the motor vehicle-related industries, fell by 0.7 percent, while total spending was up by 0. 2 percent.
"All of the trends for the total series have generally been increasing since October 2002. The trends for total spending and total retail spending are increasing at a faster rate than the trend for core retail spending, which has eased slightly since early 2013," Cardno said.
The country saw 111 million electronic card transactions across all industries in July, totaling 5.8 billion NZ dollars.
