Shoppers are failing to spend despite successive interest rate cuts, official data shows.

However, economists say the plight of retailers will be low on the central bank’s agenda when it meets on Tuesday for its next interest rate decision.

Retail spending fell 0.1 per cent in December, seasonally adjusted, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Monday.

Economists had forecast retail trade to be up by 0.3 per cent for the month.

But spending was up 0.4 per cent in the quarter compared with the September quarter last year.

Commonwealth Bank economist James McIntyre said the weak December figures were surprising.

“We were actually surprised at some of the price outcomes there, we were expecting weaker prices given all the anecdotes of discounting coming out of the retail sector,” he said.

Mr McIntyre said it was likely the impact of the rate cuts hadn’t filtered through to the retail sector yet.

“Once you get to the six months after that first rate cut you do tend to find that retail on average has been three to four per cent higher over last two cutting cycles.

“If the rebound in retail does not come in the next month or two don’t be surprised that six months down the track from that November cut (May) we should be seeing some relatively better outcomes.”

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut the cash rate by 25 basis points in November and December, taking it from 4.75 per cent to 4.25 per cent.

An AAP survey of 14 economists last week showed all but one expected the RBA to cut rates again in February, primarily due to a worsening global economic outlook.

ICAP economist Adam Carr said the weak retail sales would “not make one iota of difference” to the RBA’s decision.

“The RBA have said themselves that domestically there is really no case to cut,” he said.

“The case for a cut, if they do indeed cut, will be made by other factors.

The ABS found that food retailers (down 0.7 per cent) and cafes and restaurants (down 1.8 per cent) had the worst sales contractions in December.

Other sub-sectors fared better, including department stores (up 1.1 per cent) and clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailers (up 3.5 per cent).

Victoria (up 1.5 per cent) and the ACT (up 1.8 per cent) were the strongest performing states over the month while Queensland (down 1.4 per cent) and the Northern Territory (down 2.6 per cent) fared the worst.