Despite the drop in sales of luxury items during the first four days of the week-long Lunar New Year Holiday the country's consumer market sales on the other hand showed signs of fast and steady growth, according to a statement from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on Wednesday.
According to the MOC statement which appeared on its website, the city of Beijing posted a 9.2 percent increase in consumer market sales compared to last year's figures while Chengdu reported a bigger increase of 13 percent.
In this same statement of the ministry the growth in consumer market sales for the provinces of Henan, Anhui and Shaanxi were reported at 10.4 percent, 11.2 percent and 14.3 percent respectively. No nationwide figures were given by the report.
With the positive growth in consumer market sales was a sharp drop in sales of luxury goods like expensive wine and rare seafood which are popular gifts given to government officials during the New Year holiday. Experts link this decrease in sales to the government's drive to fight graft and cut-down spending on luxury in government.
Big cuts in sales of expensive alcoholic drinks that went as high as 70 percent were reported by several shopping malls in Fuzhou, the capital city of the rich province of Fujian in China's eastern coast. Meanwhile, sales figures for rare seafood dove to us much as 50 percent. Sales of non-luxury goods on the other hand generally had an upward trend, the MOC said.
Aside from consumer goods, the catering, online business, entertainment and tourism sectors also did well during the New Year Holiday, which is the country's most important and most celebrated holiday.