China’s retail sales grew at slower pace in Jun, missed expectations
DATA MACRO
China’s retail sales grew at slower pace in Jun, missed expectations
DATA MACRO

China’s retail sales grew at slower pace in Jun, missed expectations

 

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China’s retail sales grew by 3.1% in June from a year earlier, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday, marking the slowest growth in 2023 and decelerating sharply from the 12.7% growth in the previous month. That’s below the 3.2% growth expected by analysts in a Reuters’ survey.

In the first half of the year, retail sales grew by 8.2% year over year to 22.76 trillion yuan in the period of January-June, 2.4 percentage points faster than the growth in the first quarter, showed the data.

However, the average two-year growth of retail sales grew by 3.1%, if base effect is excluded, picking up by 0.6 percentage point from May.

With a contribution of 77.2% to the economic growth, consumption has played an increasingly prominent role in driving the country’s economy in the first half of the year, said spokesperson of the NBS.

“As the society and economy fully resumed normal operations, the economy is recovering, the consumption scenarios are expanding, policies to promote consumption are taking effect, spending by residents is steadily growing, and market retail sales are accelerating,” he said.

In breakdown, retail sales of goods rose by 1.7% in June from a year earlier, slowing from the 10.5% growth in May, and catering sales grew by 16.1%, slowing sharply from the 35.1% growth in the previous month, showed the data.

For the first half of the year, retail sales of goods rose by 6.8% year over year and catering sales grew by 21.4%.

Online retail sales grew by 13.1% year over year to top 7.16 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, with online retail sales of physical goods up by 10.8%, accounting for 26.6% of the total retail sales of consumer goods, according to the NBS.

In June alone, online retail sales o goods grew by 6.7% from a year earlier, slowing by 4.1 percentage points from the previous month and accounting for 31.5% from the total retail sales.

Notably, retail sales of auto products declined by 1.1% in June from a year earlier, and for the first half of the year, auto product retail sales rose by 6.8%, showed the data.

Retail sales of gold, silver and jewelry, as well as that of sports and recreation goods, increased by 17.5% and 10.5% year on year in the first six months, respectively.