China's retail sales up 15.8% in 1st two months

China's retail sales rose 15.8 percent year on year to 2.9018 trillion yuan (441.67 billion U.S. dollars) in the first two months of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Friday.


Sheng Laiyun, spokesman with the NBS, said the growth was 3.3 percentage points lower than December's level.


Urban retail sales of consumer goods topped 2.5173 trillion yuan in the Jan.-Feb. period, up 15.9 percent year on year, while retail sales in rural areas rose 15.4 percent to 384.5 billion yuan from a year earlier, he said.
(Source:http://news.xinhuanet.com)