Grocery spend amid pandemic stretches ahead of accommodation, transport and entertainment spend

Consumers continue to spend big on groceries and perishables but our spend on transport, accommodation and entertainment has collapsed.
Grocery spend amid pandemic stretches ahead of accommodation, transport and entertainment spend

Spending on groceries and perishables in April increased by 20% on an average month, with consumers forking out an additional €190m when compared with April 2019.
Spending on groceries and perishables in April increased by 20% on an average month, with consumers forking out an additional €190m when compared with April 2019.

Consumers continue to spend big on groceries and perishables but our spend on transport, accommodation and entertainment has collapsed.

New data issued by the Central Bank of Ireland tracked consumer spend on debit and credit cards for the month of April. It is the first release to capture a full month of lockdown measures and the impact these measures had on our spending.

It found that ATM withdrawals are becoming less frequent but people are taking out more cash when they do make the trip to an ATM, and reported that card transactions declined by 35% - some €2.24bn - in April 2020 in comparison to April 2019, with several sectors wiped out with their biggest ever contractions.

Spending on groceries and perishables in April increased by 20% on an average month, with consumers forking out an additional €190m when compared with April 2019. Grocery sales did decline in comparison to March, though, when shoppers were stocking up on supplies in anticipation of an expected lockdown.

Clothing spend is down 46% and hardware down 38%, while our spend on electronics, such as phones and laptops, is also down.

Unsurprisingly, spend on transport and accommodation has reached record lows. Transport declined by 87% and accommodation by 91%, the largest contractions ever recorded for those sectors. Spending on social outlets, like restaurants or entertainment, declined by 71% and 50% respectively.

Online shopping continues to be strong, though. Consumers spent €1.7bn in April 2020, accounting for 49% of all card transactions.

Retail card spend hit a low-point in mid-April but has recovered by 32% in the weeks since. The increase in spend coincided with the first phase of restrictions being eased in early May.

This bump has continued throughout May, though activity remains much lower than in a normal month. ATM withdrawals are 44% lower than in early March, before the pandemic containment measures were enacted, though the average value of an ATM withdrawal is higher as people seek to reduce the number of trips they have to make. The average withdrawal increased from around €140 to approximately €180, suggesting people are concentrating their withdrawals into fewer trips.

There were just under 4.3 million ATM transactions in April, down from more than 8.3 million in March and more than 10 million in February. The April figures represented just one-third of that seen in December.

There was also a significant decline in the number of times debit cards were used to pay for goods at a point-of-sale, with just over 70 million sales recorded, down from more than 110 million in December.

Credit card use was similarly hit. Personal cards were used in 7.4 million sales, down from more than 10 million in each of the previous three months, while business credit cards were used on just 672,000 occasions, down from 1.7 million in December and January.

The data comes in the wake of a Deloitte Consumer Tracker which found many people are holding off buying big-ticket items. Some 37% of people said they intend to spend more on groceries but 44% of people said they are delaying big purchases due to the virus, with 60% saying they are keeping their cars longer than planned as discretionary spending takes a hit.

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