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China's retail sales rises 15%

Beijing, The retail sales of consumer goods in China rose 15 percent year-on-year to 220 billion yuan (28.2 billion U.S. dollars) during the week-long Spring Festival holiday, said sources with the Ministry of Commerce on Saturday. Retail sales in the catering industry surged 18 percent over last year's Spring Festival holiday.Supermarkets earned 1.98 billon yuan in revenue during the week, up 10.1 percent, and shopping malls' turnover grew 22.2 percent to 743 million yuan. Spending in restaurants grew 15.4 percent to 91.44 million yuan, stimulated by wedding ceremonies and family banquets, with the average price of a table of dishes totaling 1,500 yuan.Ninety-five percent of the restaurants in Beijing received reservations for family reunion dinners during the holiday. Sales of flat screen TV sets, including liquid crystal display (LCD) sets and plasma screen sets, accounted for 90 percent of the total sales of color TV sets in Beijing, while the sales of high-end mobile phones soared 40 percent in GOME retail stores in Chongqing. Motorcycles priced between 3,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan sold well in rural areas of central Hubei Province and eastern Jiangsu Province as more and more farmers rode motorcycles to make New Year visits to relatives and friends. Henan Province received 6.05 million tourists in the period, booming 26.4 percent, who spent 2.08 billion yuan, increasing 19.9 percent.A total of 14.67 million people traveled in Sichuan Province in the period, growing 21.9 percent, and spent 3.8 billion yuan, rising 31.5 percent. Farmers' consumption capability is on the rise partly because China's rural cooperative medical care system, under which the government helps fund farmers' medical expenses, will cover 80 percent of counties this year and partly because students in rural areas will be exempted from paying tuition fees in the nine-year compulsory education, said the ministry. China has three Golden Week holidays every year, including the Spring Festival holiday, May 1 Labor Day holiday and October 1 National Day holiday.The Chinese government launched Golden Week holidays in 1999, in the hope of encouraging people to spend more money for the benefit of economic growth. In 2006, the retail sales of China's consumer goods rose 14.5 percent over that in 2005 to 300 billion yuan during the National Day holiday.

 

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