Consumer retail sales up by 13 pct in NE China province

The retail sales of consumer goods in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province rose 13 percent to reach 176 billion yuan (21.8 billion U.S. dollars) last year, according to local government statistics.

This means that Heilongjiang Province registered a double-digit growth in retail sales for the fourth straight year in 2005, according to the provincial statistics bureau.

Of the total retail sales, urban retail sales came to 154.93 billion yuan, a year-on-year rise of 13.4 percent; rural areas reported a growth rate of 10.6 percent at 21.07 billion yuan.

The total sales of the catering sector came to 20.41 billion yuan last year, a rise of 14.5 percent year on year, which was 2.5 percentage points lower than the previous year.

The slow growth of the catering sector was partly due to the outbreak of bird flu in some places of the country and pollution of the Songhua River last year, according to sources with the provincial statistics bureau.

Source: Xinhua