By Kymberly Martin

Hey big spenders.

Australians splashed out over a billion dollars a day during the Christmas trade period. The record spending spree of $46.58 billion is a rise of 4.3% from $44.63 billion for the same period in 2015, which is in line with the average increase for the Christmas trade period each year. These latest retail trade figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics covered the second-half of November and all of December.

It is the first time retail that retail has cracked an average spend of more than one billion dollars a day for the Christmas trade period and it is good news for the entire industry, National Retail Association chief executive, Dominique Lamb said.  “These results should also give retailers and employees confidence as we head into 2017.”

New South Wales shoppers spent the most  for Christmas with a total spend of over $15 billion, followed by Victoria at close to $12 billion and Queensland at around $9.2 billion. The ABS figures also saw a rise in the trend estimate for Australian retail of 0.3% for December 2016, with a seasonally adjusted rise of 0.9% for the December quarter.

In trend estimate terms there were rises in food retailing (0.4%), household goods (0.3%), clothing, footwear and personal accessories (0.3%), department stores (0.1%), other retailing (0.1%) and cafes, restaurants and takeaway food (0.2%).

All states and territories recorded a rise in trend terms for December 2016 with the largest increases in Victoria (0.4%), New South Wales (0.3%) and Queensland (0.3%).