Inside Retail presents the Australian Retail Index.

The index gives a quick overview of retail statistics in four key categories; fashion and accessories, furniture and homewares, sporting and recreational, and other.

Key retail statistics are shown weekly, with yearly comparisons available.

In more encouraging signs for the retail industry, sales growth across the country continued to climb with overall retail sales lifting by an impressive 3.28 per cent from the previous week. This is in stark contrast to the same week last year where there was a decrease of nearly 15 per cent. As previous reported, the Australian Retail Index is showing that retail sales growth has been improving steadily since the middle of May 2015.

All retail sectors outperformed their growth in the same week last year, with the best performance coming from the furniture and homewares sector with an 11.65 per cent growth on the previous week.