China News Service, March 26: The State Council Information Office held a press conference on the 26th to introduce recent data and policies on production, consumption, import and export. Vice Minister of Commerce Guo Tingting emphasized at the meeting that my country’s consumer market is expected to continue to maintain a positive trend.
Guo Tingting introduced that since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Commerce has thoroughly implemented the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, implemented various policies and measures to promote consumption, organized and carried out a series of "Consumption Promotion Year" activities, and promoted the continued expansion of consumption. In the first two months, the total retail sales increased by 5.5%. The consumer market continued to recover and the overall trend of steady growth was maintained, which can be summarized as three characteristics.
First, bulk consumption such as automobiles and home furnishings has stabilized and improved. Retail sales of commodities increased by 4.6% year-on-year, with nearly 90% of the 16 categories of commodities above designated size achieving positive growth. Among them, the retail sales of communication equipment increased by 16.2% year-on-year; the retail sales of automobiles increased by 8.7% year-on-year, which was 2.8 percentage points higher than last year. Household consumption also rebounded to varying degrees, with retail sales of home appliances, furniture and building materials for units above designated size increasing by 5.7%, 4.6% and 2.1% respectively year-on-year.
Second, consumption of services such as catering and tourism has become more dynamic. Driven by the holiday economy, service consumption potential has been further released. In the first two months, catering revenue increased by 12.5% year-on-year, 3.3 percentage points higher than the same period last year, accounting for 11.7% of total retail sales, and contributing 24.8% to the growth of total retail sales. Retail sales of services increased by 12.3%, continuing to maintain double-digit growth. As mentioned just now, the box office of Spring Festival movies exceeded 8 billion yuan, setting a new record for the Spring Festival box office in previous years. The total expenditure of domestic tourists during the Spring Festival holiday was 632.69 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.3%.
Third, new consumption such as digital and green consumption is booming. Digital consumption is growing rapidly. In the first two months, national online retail sales increased by 15.3% year-on-year, of which online retail sales of physical goods increased by 14.4%. Green consumption is very popular, especially new energy vehicles. In the first two months, new energy passenger vehicles The retail volume increased by 37.2% year-on-year. These new drivers and new highlights will bring greater room for growth in consumption throughout the year.
Guo Tingting said that looking forward to the whole year this year, with the implementation of various policies and measures to expand domestic demand and promote consumption, the favorable conditions and positive factors supporting the growth momentum of consumption are constantly increasing, the endogenous driving force for consumption growth is also continuing to increase, and new potentials are constantly increasing. freed. my country's consumer market is expected to continue to maintain a positive trend.