Goyder said that the retailers for example Wesfarmers, what owns Coles, a supermarket group, and Bunnings, a hardware giant, as well as Target and Kmart, the apparel stores, were is in need of working harder in challenging and recent tough trading environment in order to attract the customers via offering better price for money.
After release of the full year sales of Wesfarmers Goyder spoke yesterday. In his statement he warned that he didn’t see any shift in the consumer confidence from the starting of that year and he was not really expecting any kind of development in near term. He said, ”I don’t think we have seen much change in the external environment over the last six months,” he added, ”I don’t think there has been much change whatsoever. Our base line would be that things will tick along as they are now.”
The Wesfarmers said that its flagship Coles the supermarket Group’s chain had actually lifted their full year sales near 6.1% to approximately $33.7 billion, since the food and the liquor sales at that time lifted 4.6% to approximately $26.18 billion. The equivalent full year liquor and food sales were nearly 3.7 % higher, at the same time as for 4th quarter similar store sales went up 3% to nearly $6.5 billion – it was the beating news of larger rival for “Woolworths” for twelfth straight quarter.
A series of cutting value of interest rate this year as well as billions dollars in the fresh investment which is triggered by mining boom, yet had not sensed enough to make alteration of their behavior.
Goyder mentioned: ”I understand why people are being cautious.” He also added, ”because I think, if you step back, we have been through a period in the global financial crisis where, and subsequently, you have had asset values fall, businesses tighten up on a whole bunch of things, house prices over time that declined a bit and superannuation funds where equities have come back.” He clearly mentioned too, “I do share with others the view that the Australian economy is in relatively great shape and I’d rather be doing business in Australia than most other places in the world at the moment.”
