At the regular news conference held in July 15th by the Ministry of Commerce, Yao Jian, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, said that according to the statistics of the National Bureau of statistics, the total retail sales of social consumer goods in the first half of this year amounted to 85833 billion yuan, an increase of 16.8% over the same period last year, a real increase of 11.6% from the price factor, down 1.4 and 3.7 percentage points respectively over the same period last year.

The sales volume of three thousand key retail enterprises monitored by the Ministry of Commerce increased by 17.6% over the same period last year, and the growth rate was flat compared with the same period last year.

Overall, consumption remained stable overall in the first half of the year, and the consumption structure changed significantly. Daily consumption of clothing and other products grew steadily. Sales of clothing in three thousand key retail enterprises monitored by the Ministry of Commerce increased by 21.6%, an increase of 3.8 percentage points over the same period last year.