Consumer spending up 13% over holidays
Print Edition
SPENDING by Chinese consumers on shopping and dining out over the recent Lunar New Year holiday rose more than 13 percent from last year, the Ministry of Commerce said.
The figures suggest consumer confidence is high despite the softening economic growth momentum at the start of the year, analysts said.
The data also suggest demand among Chinese consumers remains healthy, though spending on luxuries was hit by an escalation of the government’s frugality campaign, they said.
The Lunar New Year is a time for family reunions and most of the country’s 1.4 billion people take the opportunity to splurge. During this year’s Golden Week, which ended on Thursday, sales of retail and catering enterprises rose 13.3 percent year on year to 610.7 billion yuan (US$100.65 billion), the ministry said.
As people celebrated the Year of the Horse, equine-themed jewelry sold briskly.
Sales of such items in shopping malls in Hubei, Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces rose 35 percent, 31.6 percent and 30.2 percent year on year, respectively.
Sales of luxury goods as a whole, however, fell sharply, partly due to a nationwide campaign against extravagance and calls for people to adopt more frugal lifestyles. In the southeastern city of Fuzhou, sales of expensive alcoholic drinks fell almost 70 percent in some supermarkets.
In contrast, the tourism and entertainment sectors thrived over the holidays.
Box office revenue in the first three days of the holiday exceeded that for the whole of last year’s festival period.
National tourism revenue during the week rose 16.4 percent from last year to 126.4 billion yuan, the National Tourism Administration said.
The number of tourists across the country in the seven days rose 14 percent to more than 231 million, it said.
Similarly, the value of transactions at home and abroad made through China UnionPay cards during the holiday jumped 23 percent year on year to nearly 200 billion yuan. Card payments in supermarkets and shopping malls increased 22 percent and 27 percent, respectively, according to China UnionPay, the national bank card operator.
Holiday spending provides a good opportunity to examine consumer confidence, Lu Ting, chief China economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said in a research note.
“The data support our view that growth in China will be relatively stable despite a new round of worries about a hard landing,” he said.
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