First Half of Year Sees Better Physical Retail and Surging Online Sales
Xu Wei
DATE:  Jul 20 2017
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
First Half of Year Sees Better Physical Retail and Surging Online Sales First Half of Year Sees Better Physical Retail and Surging Online Sales

(Yicai Global) July 20 -- Physical retail sales picked up while online sales maintained rapid growth in China in the first half of the year, the country's ministry of commerce announced.

Sales turnover of specialty stores and department stores receiving key monitoring of the ministry exhibited a year-on-year growth of 5.6 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively, in the first half of the year, with growth rates accelerating 3.6 percentage points and 0.7 percentage point over the same period last year, said Gao Feng, spokesman for the ministry of commerce, at a regular press conference today. Exclusive stores and convenient stores recorded swift growth, and their respective sales turnover was up 8.6 percent and 7.2 percent on an annual basis.

The national online commodity retail sales, amounting to CNY2.4 trillion (USD353 billion) in the first half, rose 28.6 percent year-on-year, and the rate of growth sped up 2.8 percentage points compared to the first quarter. It accounted for 13.8 percent of total retail sales of consumer goods, 2.2 percentage points higher than the same period last year.

In the first six months of this year, national catering income was CNY1.85 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 11.2 percent that was 0.4 percentage point higher compared to the growth in the first quarter. National film box office income grew 10.5 percent year-on-year, while the tourism market continued to be favorable. Tourists received by Mount Huangshan and Mount Taishan rose 16.5 percent and 14.1 percent respectively, and tourism income generated by Lhasa climbed 24.7 percent.

Green shared consumption has become the center of market focus, said Gao. In the first six months, the year-on-year sales volume growth of air conditioners with level 1 energy consumption of major retailing enterprises was 29.9 percentage points higher than that of the overall air conditioner market; that of refrigerators with level 1 energy consumption was 15.4 percentage points higher than the overall refrigerator market; and that of smart TVs was 20.7 percentage points higher than the overall TV market. With the speedy development of the shared economy, shared bikes have become a daily consumption choice of common people, Gao added.

Follow Yicai Global on
Keywords:   Data,Ministry,Commerce,Sale,Growth,Shared-Economy,Retailing,Consumption,Online Sales