The National Bureau of Statistics announced on May 17 sales of consumer products valued 466.3 billion yuan rose 12.2 percent in April over the same month of last year.

The catering industry experienced a year-on-year rise of 18.4 percent, standing at 62 billion yuan while the wholesaling and retailing grew 11.8 percent.

The most remarkable upswing took place in petroleum products whose sales surged 44.5 percent. That is followed by sales of sports and entertainment products which went up 29.8 percent, faster than the 28.7 percent increase of sales of grain and oil.

The latest release of the People's Bank of China shows a basically stable corporate goods price index in April which is up slightly by 0.1 percent over the last month and 2.8 percent over the same period of last year. Prices of consumer durables stop dropping and prices of home appliances show signs of picking up. But oil prices have robust growth of 13.3 percent compared with last month and 62.3 percent compared with the same month last year.

In April the consumer price index (CPI) climbed 1.8 percent over the same month of last year.

By People's Daily Online