News Archive

Spending rises over Chinese New Year
2002/02/15

Shanghai - Consumer spending rose sharply this week, as Chinese are enjoying their Spring Festival holiday to celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Horse.

China has extended the number of holidays over de past few years dramatically in an effort to jumpstart consumer spending after a slowdown during the Asian economic crisis at the second half of the 1990's. This policy has been baptized the 'holiday economics'.

The Chinese New Year traditionally is a time of spending. The usual family get-together goes hand in hand with gifts, dinners, and travel costs. No difference this year, as especially domestic shop and restaurant owners once again saw the money flow in easily.

Between February 9 and 14, sales at 2,000 outlets of Shanghai's 210 leading retailers reached 2.03 billion Renminbi (US$ 244.5 million), the Shanghai Daily reports on Friday. This is an increase of 12.4 percent over the same period last year, according to figures of the Shanghai Commercial Commission.

The top 170 hotels and restaurants in China's largest city saw sales rise to 7.8 million Renminbi (US$ 943.533), up 47.6 percent compared to the same period in 2001. Super- and hypermarkets had combined sales of 1.42 billion Renminbi (US$ 171.7 million), up 17.8 percent from last year. Only department stores had to face a drop in sales compared to 2001, with 2.7 percent less at 444 million Renminbi (53.7 million).

Retailers elsewhere in the country are likely to benefit from similar spending moods, yet figures are not yet available. Some reports in the past year suggested that China's holiday economics had lost much of their momentum, but initial signals suggest that holidays still enhance consumer spending.

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