Photo:Xinhua

The growth of China's retail sales, a key economic indicator, slowed down in August as the Delta variant outbreak and extreme weathers constrained consumption during the summer vacation, but favorable factors will still sustain stable consumption growth for the rest of the year.

The country's retail sales stood at 3.44 trillion yuan ($534 billion) in August, up 2.5 percent year-on-year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday. That compared with an 8.5-percentage surge in July.

China’s total retail sales of consumer goods in Aug 2021 Infographic: Deng Zijun/GT

 
 
Between January and August, the country's total retail sales reached 28.12 trillion yuan, up 18.1 percent year-on-year. During the same period, online sales grew 19.7 percent year-on-year to 8.12 trillion yuan, according to the NBS.

NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui said at a press briefing on Wednesday that new COVID-19 case spikes and flooding in some regions affected travel and consumption, and thereby dragged down total retail sales. 

NBS data showed that the country's catering revenue was 345.6 billion yuan in August, down 4.5 percent year-on-year, which is compared with growth of 14.3 percent year-on-year in July.

Fu said that the trend of stable economic recovery remains unchanged, with a range of favorable factors supporting consumption recovery.

As a country with per capita GDP exceeding $10,000, China's large population of 1.4 billion, whom about 400 million are middle class nationals, is the same as the total number of the middle-class people in all developed countries. This means growing demand in consumption upgrading, according to Fu.

In August, sales of commodities for consumption upgrading remained comparatively active, with sales of sports and entertainment products up 22.7 percent year-on-year, and that of cultural and office goods up 20.4 percent year-on-year, according to the NBS.

Meanwhile, Fu said that the country's stable employment, fast growth in corporate revenue and increasingly improved social guarantees will all contribute to stable economic growth in the long-term.

The country added 9.38 million new jobs in the first eight months of the year, achieving 85.3 percent of the overall target for the year. In August, the country's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.1 percent.

Global Times