China Retail Sales Grow Less than Estimated
2024-09-14 02:13
By
Farida Husna
1 min. read
China's retail sales expanded by 2.1% year-on-year in August 2024, moderating from a 2.7% growth in the prior month and missing market consensus of 2.5%.
The latest result reflected unusual weather events this summer, marked by scorching heat and pouring rains.
Sales growth slowed for personal care (1.3% vs 2.1% in July) amid weak spending for cosmetics (-6.1% vs -6.1%), clothing, shoes, hats & textiles (-1.6% vs -5.2%), gold, silver, and jewelry (-12.0% vs -10.4%), furniture (-3.7% vs -1.1%), oil products (-0.4% vs 1.6%), office supplies (-1.9% vs -2.4%), car (-7.3% vs -4.9%), and building materials (-6.7% vs -2.1%).
On the other hand, turnover quickened for grain, oil, food (10.1% vs 9.9%), and communications equipment (14.8% vs 12.7%) while sales of home appliances bounced back (3.4% vs -2.4%).
On a monthly basis, retail trade was almost flat after rising 0.35% in July.
From January to August period, retail sales increased by 3.9%.