(Photo/Chinanews.com)

China’s total retail sales of consumer goods are expected to hit 41.1 trillion yuan in 2019, said the country’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) at a briefing on Monday.

Consumption has served as the largest contributor to China’s economic growth for six years in a row, said Wang Bin, deputy director of MOFCOM’s Market Operation Department.

Statistics indicated strong demand for services. In the first 11 months of 2019, the country’s total catering revenue grew by 9.4 percent, 1.5 percentage points higher than the growth of retail sales.

In the first three quarters, the per capita service consumption of Chinese residents was up 10.2 percent from a year ago, accounting for 50.6 percent of their final consumption.

During the same period, China imported 1.04 trillion yuan of goods, up 15.3 percent year-on-year. The import growth of the country’s cross-border e-commerce platforms topped 30 percent.

At present, there are over 70 million entities in the distribution sector, creating around 200 million jobs. In the first three quarters of 2019, major industries of the sector saw a total added value of 7.8 trillion yuan, 11.2 percent of the country’s GDP.