Price rise pressure to be further relieved in latter half, MOC report

A forecast and analysis report on the domestic market in the first half of this year and on the development tendency of the whole year was released recently by the Ministry of Commerce (MOC). According to the report, the country's total retail sales of consumer goods registered 2524.92 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a 12.8 percent increase year on year, with the growth rate being 4.8 points higher than in the previous year. The growth rate of consumer goods market reached an all time high since 1997, the momentum of rapid growth of the sales of capital goods slowed down, the price of basic products began to fall, and the market operation was good as a whole. In the latter half of this year, the commodity market will continue to develop steadily, but the growth rate may be slightly lower than that in the first half of the year.

According to an analysis of the supply of and demand for 600 types of commodities, 138 types had balanced supply and demand in the first half of the year, accounting for 23 percent of the total. Or 8.5 points higher than that in the latter half of last year. Commodities such as grain, oil, cotton and chemical fertilizer were in short supply for a while and were sold at higher prices, recently the shortage in the supply of these goods has obviously been alleviated. In addition, the commodity market operation in the first half of this year also displayed some salient features, including the fast growth in the business of the catering industry; the cooling demand for the means of production, and a slowdown tendency of price hikes; the accelerated structural adjustment of circulation industry, and the obvious increase in the proportion of chain operations.

The report forecasts that, the domestic commodity market will continue to develop steadily in the latter half of the year, but the growth rate may be slightly lower than that in the Jan-Jun period. The total retail sales of consumer goods in the whole year are estimated to exceed 5,000 billion yuan, a 10.5 percent increase over last year. The pressure of price rise will be further relieved, and the overall level of consumption price in the whole year is estimated to rise by about 3 percent. The sales of capital goods will top 10,000 billion yuan, more than 15 percent rise over last year.

By People's Daily Online