Olympic Bid Victory Promotes Consumerism in ChinaBeijing's successful Olympic bid, in combination with surges in the catering service and retail sales during the summer season, helped boost China's retail sales volume by 9.8 percent year-on-year to 285.14 billion yuan in July, official statistics showed.According to the figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Wednesday, urban retail sales reached 180.39 billion yuan in July, increasing 11.4 percent over the same period of last year. Retail sales in rural areas grew 7.2 percent year-on- year to 104.75 billion yuan. The growth rate of retail sales in urban areas was 4.2 percentage points higher than that in rural areas. NBS statistics showed that sales of the catering service reached to 33.71 billion yuan, up 16.8 percent over one year ago. Sales of the wholesale and retail trade industry grew 10.5 percent year-on-year to 192.55 billion yuan. Retail sales of other industries increased 4.1 percent year-on-year to 58.88 billion yuan. The NBS said that Chinese retailers took advantage of Beijing winning the host right of the 2008 Olympic Games to carry out various sales promotion activities. In addition, sales of such consumer goods as air conditioners, personal computers, beverages, fruit and household decorations picked up rapidly during the summer. NBS figures showed that sales of the catering service also surged in the summer, pushing up total retail sales of the country by 0.9 percent. |
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