Consumer spending growth slows to its weakest in 17 months

Growth in consumer spending has slowed to its weakest in 17 months.

According to the latest Visa’s Irish Consumer Spending Index (CSI), expenditure across all payment types (cash, cheques and electronic payments) rose by 4.3% year-on-year. This is down from 5% in September and the weakest increase since May 2015. The latest expansion was also slower than the average across the 26 months of the series to date.

Face-to-face spending was down 0.4% year-on-year, the first decline recorded in the series so far. This followed a marginal increase in the previous month.