BEIJING, July 16 (Xinhua) -- China's retail sales of consumer goods declined 3.9 percent year on year in the second quarter of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday.

The figure narrowed 15.1 percentage points from the first quarter, the data showed.

In the first half of the year, retail sales of consumer goods went down 11.4 percent year on year to 17.23 trillion yuan (about 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars), narrowing by 7.6 percentage points from the first quarter.