China's catering industry in May this year has realised a total retail sales of 66.37 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.5 percent and down by 27.7 percent from that in the same period last year (the growth rate peaked in May 2004 as a result of recovery and rebound from the SARS epidemic in 2003 ).

However, the speed is 7 percent higher than that in the previous month, 6.7 percent faster than the growth of social consumable retail sales and accounting for 13.5 percent of the total social consumable retail sales.

According to the statistics from Department of Reform under Ministry of Commerce, the catering industry has experienced steady growth in the first five months of this year, with the accumulative retail sales reaching 334.63 billion yuan and a year-on-year net increase of 50.72 billion yuan.

Although the 17.9 percent increase is 5.7 percent slower than that in the same period last year, it outpaced the rise of social consumable retail sales by 4.69 percentage points and took up 13.6 percent of the social consumable retail sales. 2.33 percentage points of the increase in social consumable retail sales was from the catering industry. The contribution is 17.6 percent .

By People's Daily Online