ONLINE consumers have been urged to look no further than their own backyard as the region’s internet spend continues to rise.
Mildura Regional Development CEO Brett Millington raised concerns Sunraysia residents were overlooking local suppliers and sourcing goods outside of the region.
“It’s fair to say across the past 12 months online shopping has continued to grow and I would expect with lockdowns occurring, that is likely to continue,” he said.
“The statistics are pretty alarming from the past 12 months,” he said.
“If you look at how much money is actually spent online … that isn’t to say those shops are not local shops, it might be local expenditure at a local shop or restaurant … but would suggest a large amount of that is going outside our region.”
Mr Millington said when comparing the data on average, $20 million was spent per month online two years ago and now Sunraysia residents were spending overall on average $25 million.
“If I compare it to January 2019, online we were spending on average $20 million per month and there has been a gradual increase to when it peaked at $25 million in July 2020.
“When businesses started to open back up locally it dropped back a little but was still around $24 million a month being spent online.
“Around Christmas, November, 2020, it peaked again – about $26.9 million, and in March 2021, it was still at $26.8 million, we had a slight drop but still significantly high.
“This goes back to the heart of the argument around why we have vacant shops in our area, with that $300 million, one third of the total local spend that we have from our region is being spent online and a significant amount of that is escaping out region.”
Mr Millington said “now more than ever” it was important for locals to support locals.
“When we compare that to the total local spend of June 2020, as $69.4 million, and June this year was $69.7 million, there was very little change in terms of local spend but if 15 per cent has increased in online spending, that certainly has an impact on local businesses,” he said.
“That gives a fair indication of why and also one of the other challenges is that visitor local spend is down with lockdowns not having those visitors coming.
“There has been a three and a half per cent decrease in visitor spend from June 2021 vs June 2020, therefor you have got increase online spend, you could say a percentage of that could have been local, it is still a significant number compared to how much dollars are generated locally and where it could go.”
Over the past 12 months, $915 million was spent in the Sunraysia region, $692 million was by local residents with the remaining $223 million from visitors. Almost a third of that is being spent online.
