China's retail sales of consumer goods totaled 667.3 billion Yuan in April, up 15.5% over the same period of 2006 or 0.2 percentage points higher than in March, according to the data released by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently,. Within this total, the urban retail sales of consumer goods reached 452.2 billion yuan, an increase of 16.0% year-on-year.

Taking a panoramic view of China's domestic wholesale and retail trade, the retailing of food, clothing and daily essentials has risen rapidly. Household consumption is faster along with the high wage raise. Especially, the growth rate of auto consumption reached up to 38.6%, which has been rare over recent years. In addition, the consumption of household appliances and building materials has kept a relative fast growth.

It has been learned that China's consumer confidence index stood at 95.8 points in the first quarter, and was stable on the whole.

By People's Daily Online