Retail turnover from Christmas spending was up 4.2 per cent in 2015, compared with that of the corresponding period the previous year, exceeding analysts’ expectations.

The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) and Roy Morgan Research revealed official figures for Christmas spending in the pre-Christmas trading period for November 15 to December 25, 2015 have come in at $47 billion, which is up 4.2 per cent from the same period for Christmas 2014.

The figures released exceeded the estimates of ARA and Roy Morgan’s annual Christmas spend figures last November, which was $46.8 billion, by $200 million.

Russell Zimmerman, ARA executive director, said the results exceeded expectations. Zimmerman said all states except, Queensland and Western Australia, “outperformed their predictions.” Both states have been affected by a slowdown of the mining sector.

“It became clear about midway through the six-week pre-Christmas period that there may be a slightly smaller increase in WA and QLD,” Zimmerman said. “Despite this though, both states maintained a small level of growth and neither stood still.”

As predicted, Victorian pre-Christmas spending saw the highest growth in 2015, up 5.8 percent, followed by NSW and Tasmania, both with 4.8 percent growth.

Category-wise, household goods sales took the lead in the growth stakes, rising 6.3 percent on pre-Christmas 2014, followed by apparel with 5.3 percent.

Online spending during the period saw total spending on e-commerce pre-Christmas of $3.1 billion.

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