The British retail giant Tesco has announced in Beijing Wednesday that it will open 10 more outlets in China this year after its first store in Beijing opened last month.

Though no exact turnover was available for the Beijing branch, but Ken Towle, newly-appointed CEO of Tesco China, responded satisfactory to the 12-day trial operation.

The Beijing store was named Hymall Tesco, the first time Tesco had added its brand name to the sign of an outlet in China.

Towle said the Hymall logo, which meant happy-shopping in Chinese, was kept in the brand name because local customers have got used to it.

The company said all its Chinese branches will change their signs to Hymall Tesco gradually, but a specific timetable has yet to be made.

With a 90 percent stake in Hymall, a top grocery brand under the Taiwan-based Ting Hsin International Group, Tesco now has 45 Hymall stores elsewhere in China.

As the UK's largest retailing group, Tesco also plans to introduce other areas of its business like financial products, Internet shopping and telecom services to China, said the company.

With the opening of the Beijing outlet on Dec. 26, Tesco has joined its international rivals -- Wal Mart, Carrefour and Metro AG in the 2008 Olympic Game host city to share a slice of the country's booming retail market.

China's retail sales rose 13.7 percent to 7.641 trillion yuan (979.62 billion U.S. dollars) in 2006, the latest statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

Source:Xinhua