The Report on China's Circulation Sector issued by the Ministry of Commerce on April 12 predicts the sales of consumer goods for 2005 would top 6 trillion yuan, an actual rise of some 10 percent. It also estimate some 14 percent increase of sales of production materials which would exceed 13 trillion yuan.

In 2004 the sales of consumer products, production materials, imports and exports and commodities futures deals all hit a record high, which was 4.3 times, 5 times, 5.9 times and 26.6 times as much as that in 1993.

The report says chain store business, logistics and e-commerce have been moving ahead quickly in the recent 3 years. The number of chain stores in certain scale and their sales expanded at an annual pace of 23.6 percent and 30 percent respectively.

The report shows that 96.1 percent of the sales of the total consumer goods have been based on market-oriented pricing.

By People's Daily Online