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China : Retail sales post strong growth |
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2004-8-16
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National Bureau of Statistics conveyed on Friday that China''s retail sales rose 13.2 per cent in July compared with the same month a year ago.
Retail sales, a driving force for the country''s economic growth, stood at 420.9 billion yuan (US$50.7 billion) for the month, the bureau informed.
The healthy retail trend is closely related to income increases for rural and urban residents, she said.
Rural residents'' per capita cash income rose a year-on-year 16.1 per cent to 1,345 yuan (US$162) during the first half of this year, while urban residents'' per capita disposable income rose 11.9 per cent to 4,815 yuan (US$580).
Sales of automobiles grew 9 per cent in July compared with a year ago, while sales of petroleum products jumped 50.2 per cent, the statistics bureau said.
Zhu Jianfang, an economist at China Securities, said China''s retail market would continue to pick up in the coming months, as people''s expectations for the future are still optimistic.
Retail sales in the rural areas rose a year-on-year 10.7 per cent in July. But the growth rate was 3.8 percentage points lower than that in the urban areas.
Fan Gang, director of the National Economic Research Institute, said the increasing income gap between rural and urban areas, as well as that between the poor and the rich, had a negative impact on China''s retail market expansion.
But if the country''s retail sales grow more than 10 per cent, it would be good enough to sustain economic development, he said.
The growth in China''s economy is expected to reduce from 11 per cent to 9 per cent, shifting from acceleration to cruising, he said.
Statistics bureau spokesman Zheng Jingping said earlier that the overall performance of China''s economy was good. |
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