Consumer spending through points of sale in Saudi Arabia during the last week ended September 4 amounted to about 10.2 billion riyals, compared to about 10.54 billion riyals for the previous week, a difference of 343.2 million riyals.
According to data from the Saudi Central Bank “SAMA”, the volume of spending continued above the barrier of ten billion riyals for the second week in a row, a scene not repeated since early last May, while the average spending for the last four weeks was 9.36 billion riyals.
Consumer spending recorded a decline of about 3. 3 percent, compared to the previous week ended August 28.In terms of sectoral performance compared to the previous week ending August 28.
The sales of six sectors grew while 11 sectors declined, with the “miscellaneous goods” sector leading the gains after recording sales of 972.1 million riyals, a growth of 5.1 percent.
The “utilities” sector came second, which recorded sales of 96.61 million riyals, a growth of 3.3 percent, then the “construction and building materials” sector, up 1.9 percent with sales of 341.5 million riyals.
In contrast, the education sector led the declines after it recorded sales through point of sale devices amounted to 571. 1 million riyals, down 18.2 percent.1 million riyals, down 18.2 percent, after five weeks of consecutive growth.

About the top-spending sectors in terms of percentage, the “food and beverage” sector accounted for 15.1 percent of total POS sales of about 1.54 billion riyals, while the sector's sales fell by 4.8 percent compared to the previous week.
The second in terms of spending volume, the “restaurants and cafes” sector came second with 12.7 percent, equivalent to 1.29 billion riyals, as sales fell by 1.1 percent during the week.
At the city level, spending in the capital Riyadh fell by 0.8 percent to 3.24 billion riyals, accounting for 31.8 percent of total POS sales, while spending in the city of Jeddah amounted to 1.62 billion riyals, equivalent to 15.9 percent, and about 548.4 million riyals in the city of Dammam.In addition, the number of transactions carried out through POS devices during the past week grew by about 1.7 percent to reach about 112.37 million transactions for all sectors compared to 110.49 million transactions for the previous week, with the average transaction per transaction amounting to about 90.7 riyals.