Photo:Xinhua

 
The total retail sales of consumer goods increased by 23.0 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2021, totaling 21.2 trillion yuan ($3.28 trillion), of which online sales accounted for 23.7 percent. The contribution of final consumption spending to economic growth reached 61.7 percent, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Thursday.

Total retail sales of consumer goods grew by an average of 4.4 percent in the past two years, and have surpassed the level in 2019, which stood at 19.5 trillion yuan, said NBS.

Food and beverage revenue reached 2.17 trillion yuan, accounting for nearly one tenth of total consumption, increasing by 48.6 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2021. The scale was basically the same as that of 2019.

China's online retail sales have been greatly promoted by the epidemic, reaching 6.11 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, up 23.2 percent year-on-year. Online retail sales of physical goods totaled 5.03 trillion yuan, accounting for 23.7 percent of total retail sales of consumer goods. 

China's express delivery volume exceeded 50 billion pieces from January to June, close to the annual level of 2018.

As business activities gradually recover from the pandemic, and local governments continue to step up efforts to ensure people's wellbeing, the increase in disposable income has supported the consumption growth.

"In the first half of this year, China's per capita disposable income grew by a two-year average of 5.2 percent in real terms, which is basically in line with the 5.3 percent two-year average growth of GDP. Considering that we have been hit by the epidemic since last year, it is not easy to achieve such per capita income growth," said Liu Aihua, spokesperson of NBS, on Thursday.

The per capita disposable income stood at 17,642 yuan in the first half of the year, up 12.6 percent year-on-year.

Global Times