Rise in Christmas sales

 

One year after a financial crisis that damaged the economies of countries throughout the region, shoppers in Asia and Australia are slowly beginning to open their wallets.

A number of countries, like India, Taiwan, Indonesia and Korea, have released strong economic data leading to strong consumer sentiment that's driving a general uptrend in spending.

And it couldn't have come at a better time, with Christmas only a couple of days away.

Xianfang Ren is a Beijing based analyst with IHS Global Insight, an industry forecaster.

She says China's retail sector wasn't too affected by the financial crisis.

Even though that private consumption of the share or GDP is quite low, retail sales has been quite stable over time, it has not been disrupted by the global financial crisis at all. This is because the structural Chinese consumption retail sales like food clothing, those necessities comprise a big portion of retail sales. Another is because China's government's tax incentives for retail sales of home appliance for autos, this has kind of helped for this year too.

A lot of the presents waiting under Christmas trees around the world would have been made in China.

So how has the lay off of millions of factory workers affected China's exports?

Xianfang Ren again.

Factories already started rehiring in the middle of this year and as in time, lots of factories in coastal China, manufacturing hubs like, Guangdong and Jojun province, they reported a rise in shortage in labourers so they've started rehiring lots of workers in July, August and September and that was actually the peak season of China's Christmas exports so the Christmas orders were already filled in the Summer.

She says western countries worst affected by the crisis, like the United States, haven't placed as many Christmas orders as previous years.

But she says there are signs foreign sentiment is on the increase.

We have seen a kind of stabilisation of China's export sector during the final quarter of this year, especially in September, a big upturn in exports so I think there is a possibility that it is quite likely that Christmas orders have picked up quite a lot compared with last year because last year's sentiment was brutally bad.

The situation isn't as positive in Japan.

The world's second largest economy is crawling out of its worst post-war recession and retailers are struggling to attract people into their stores.

Consumer prices were down two point two per cent year on year in October, the eighth consecutive fall.

It's the same in Thailand where retail sales have also dropped this year.

But in Australia, it's impossible to avoid the Christmas countdown.

The Australian Retailers Association is expecting retail sales this Christmas to hit almost 39 billion Australian dollars a four point seven per cent increase from 2008.

The association's executive director, Russell Zimmerman, says last week's spending wasn't as high as he'd expected but he's still confident.

The trading last week for 50 per cent of retailers was below or meeting expectations so therefore we're saying at the moment things aren't out there as buoyant as they should be but we believe the rush is about to begin and the retailers out there who are expecting 38.7 billion in retail sales this Christmas ,we hope are going to rushed off their feet from here on.

Mr Zimmerman says 62% of Australian consumers spend around $500 on Christmas presents.

And he expects that to be the same this year, despite a number of interest rate rises this year.

Generally speaking, from Christmas to Christmas we do find that things are better than the previous Christmas and we believe that this Christmas, everything is in place to get that increase being that the interest rates, although there's been three of them they're still historically low, fuel prices are well down, consumers are fairly confident, there's confident returning to the consumer so we believe the figures we've put out are still achievable.