First quarter apparel sales slowdown (China)

April 17, the Ministry of Commerce held a regular press conference to announce the first quarter of this year China’s commercial work run. Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the Commerce Department said that according to the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first quarter, the whole country achieved total retail sales of 4.9319 trillion Yuan, an increase of 14.8% year-on-year, after deducting price factors, the actual growth was 10.9%, the nominal growth rate and actual growth rate respectively 1.5 and 0.7 percentage points year-on-year slowdown. March, total retail sales of social consumer goods grew by 15.2% year-on-year, 0.5 percentage points up than January to February, showing a low yet stable trend of growth.

The first quarter, China’s import and export value was $ 859.37 billion, an increase of 7.3 percent over last year. Among this, exports 430.02 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 7.6% Y/Y; imports 429.35 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 6.9% Y/Y; trade surplus of $ 670 million (the same period last year was deficit of $ 2.22 billion).

The first quarter, China’s general trade import and export was $ 452.67 billion, an increase of 8.1%Y/Y. Among this, exports of $ 200.5 billion, an increase of 7.9%, 2.3 percentage points higher than the growth rate in February; imports $ 252.17 billion, an increase of 8.2%. Import and export of processing trade was 304.73 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 4.4%. Among this, exports 196.07 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 6.3%; imports 108.66 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 1.2%, 1.1 percentage points lower than the growth rate in February.