Online retail turnover in Australia in the first four months of this year totalled A$2.87 billion, according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, or Stats).
If CDN is doing its sums right, that’s a 74 percent increase on the $1.65 billion recorded in the first four months of 2015.
For the 12 months to April, Australian online retail sales totalled $9.19 billion, according to Stats estimates, or about three percent of total Australian retail sales.
That contrasts sharply with an earlier, and perhaps more optimistic, estimate, by the National Australia Bank that claimed in the same period – ie the 12 months to April – online retail sales totalled almost $20 billion, more than twice the ABS estimate. NAB claimed this accounted for 6.6pc of all Australian retail sales.
Reasons for the stark difference in estimates are not entirely clear, but it could be that NAB is counting in Australian online purchases from overseas-based operators – these are not counted in the ABS stats.
Stats stresses that it defines “online sales” as sales of goods and/or services where the order is placed by the buyer via the Internet or any other computer network, regardless of whether the payment is made online or not.