China's Economic Data for Jan-Feb, 2021. Graphic: Jin Jianyu and Chen Xia/GT

 
China's retail sales, a reflection of nation-wide consumption, surged by 33.8 percent from January to February this year, versus a -20.5 percent plunge recorded for the same period last year, and gradually picked up growth rate with country's efficient epidemic control and the nationwide vaccination rollout already under way.

During the first two months of the year, total retail sales reached 6.97 trillion yuan ($1.07 trillion), a year-on-year increase of 33.8 percent, and edged up by 6.4 percent compared with same period in 2019, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Monday.

Among which, online retail sales continued to grow and reached 1.76 trillion yuan, up 32.5 percent as consumers tending to purchase products online to avoid going outside. The online sales of physical products rose 30.6 percent year-on-year to 1.44 trillion yuan, accounting for 20.7 percent of total retail sales nationwide.

"Both consumption and investment are still in the process of recovery," Liu Aihua, spokesperson with the NBS, told the press conference in Beijing on Monday, adding that recovery of commodity sales had accelerated, while catering consumption has not yet returned to the level before the epidemic.

Liu introduced that from January to February, the average two-year growth of commodity retail sales was 3.8 percent, and catering revenue fell by 2 percent, indicating that catering consumption is still affected by the clustering and sporadic epidemics in some areas, and the consumption potential has not been fully released.

While online retail has maintained rapid growth, physical stores have gradually recovered their growth in the context of effective prevention and control of the epidemic, said Liu.

"Despite the huge rebound, the recovery of consumption is still relatively lower compared with the recovery pace in other major economic indicators, and need time to restore the momentum in pre-epidemic level,"Xu Gao, chief economist with Bank of China International, told the Global Times on Monday.

Xu added that before 2020, China's retail sales maintained a growth rate of about 8 percent year-on-year, thus the 6.4 percent growth rate still indicated a weakened pace.

For the whole year of 2020, China's retail sales dropped 3.9 percent year-on-year to 39.20 trillion yuan as a result of the prolonged coronavirus outbreak. 

Xu forecast that the country's retail sales may return to pre-epidemic level in Summer this year, boosted by nationwide large-scale vaccination campaigns, while a turning point may still depend on the pandemic situation worldwide.

Global Times