China's retail and catering sectors registered a 6.8 percent increase year-on-year during this year's Spring Festival holiday which ran from Jan 21 to Friday, Geng Hongzhou, an official from the Ministry of Commerce, said on Monday.
He added consumption of catering, hospitality and other life services also rebounded during this year's holiday.
The consumption of dine-in services increased 15.4 percent compared with the same period last year, he said.
During the Spring Festival, various regions carried out various activities to promote consumption. Beijing launched the ice and snow festival, and Shanghai launched the theme activities to welcome the New Year. Heilongjiang, Zhejiang and Sichuan issued Spring Festival consumption vouchers to promote holiday consumption. Tianjin, Jiangsu and Guizhou held the New Year's Fair. Hunan and Ningxia reported year-on-year growth of retail sales of 13.8% and 9.4% respectively.
According to the data monitored by the Ministry of Commerce, during the Spring Festival, China reported a year-on-year increase of 9.0%, 6.0%, 4.4% and 3.6% in the sales of grain, oil and food, clothing, gold, silver and jewelry, and automobile.
Hainan, Hunan and Zhejiang reported a year-on-year increase of 15.3%, 10.5% and 8.9% in catering business revenue during the week-long spring festival.
The takeout package is very popular, and catering enterprises in Inner Mongolia and Anhui reported a year-on-year increase of more than 20% in takeout turnover.
Various regions promoted the innovation of consumption scenarios, immersive, experiential and interactive consumption experience, and leisure consumption such as ice and snow, entertainment, fitness, tourism and so on has rapidly increased.
Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing launched the New Year Lantern Festival with technology integration to create a 3D immersive consumption scene. Cross-regional travel has accelerated the recovery of accommodation consumption with some e-commerce platforms reporting the turnover of accommodation doubled year on year.
