China's New Year market booms, luxury gift sales down

BEIJING-- China's consumer market boomed during the first days of the Lunar New Year holiday despite falling luxury gift sales, according to the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on Wednesday.

In the first four days of the week-long Spring Festival holiday, the most important traditional holiday in China, consumer market sales expanded steadily and quickly, the MOC said in a statement on its website.

Without giving nationwide figures, the MOC said consumer market sales in the cities of Beijing and Chengdu had risen by 9.2 percent and 13 percent year on year respectively. According to the MOC, sales in Shaanxi, Anhui and Henan provinces grew by 14.3 percent, 11.2 percent and 10.4 percent respectively.

Online business and the catering, tourism and entertainment sectors have also prospered during the holiday, according to the MOC.

China's consumer market has boomed in spite of falling sales of luxury goods purchased as new year gifts, according to the MOC.

Sales of luxury gifts such as expensive alcoholic beverages and rare seafood, which are sometimes sent as gifts to officials during the holiday, have fallen sharply. Experts have viewed the drop as a direct result of the central government's anti-graft and frugality campaign.

In Fuzhou, capital city of the prosperous east coast province of Fujian, a dozen shopping malls saw sales of luxury alcoholic beverages fall by 70 percent year on year in the first four days of the holiday, and sales of rare seafood were down by 50 percent, while sales of ordinary goods went up in general, said the MOC.