Economy wide spending has slowed to a crawl but cheap petrol and the recent interest rate cut should hopefully turn that around.

Spending rose just 0.2 per cent in January, marking the slowest spending growth since 2012, figures from the Commonwealth Bank on Monday show.

Sales growth has been slowing for the past five months, but CommSec chief economist, Craig James, said consumers should start splashing more cash this year.

“With household finances improving following the fall in petrol prices and recent interest rate cut, we can expect many consumers to slowly start opening their wallets and increasing their spending as we progress through 2015,” he said.

“Overall, the economy is in a relatively stable position, so business owners should start planning for growth in 2015 and take advantage of the expected increase in household disposable income.”

The strongest performing sectors last month were hotels and motels and transportation, according to the Business Sales Indicator, which tracks credit and debit card transactions on CBA machines.

Spending rose in the ACT, Tasmania, Western Australia and Queensland, but had fallen in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

AAP