Wholesale and retail trades 2020

In the first quarter of 2020, the value added of the wholesale and retail trades was 2.20 trillion yuan($314.45 billion). The total retail sales of consumer goods in April reached 2.82 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 7.5 percent, which was 8.3 percentage points less than in March, or a month-on-month growth of 0.32 percent.

In the first four months of 2020, the total retail sales of consumer goods reached 10.68 trillion yuan, down 16.2 percent year-on-year, a narrower decline of 2.8 percentage points compared with the first quarter.

Analyzed by different areas, in April, retail sales in urban areas reached 2.46 trillion yuan, down 7.5 percent year-on-year, and those in rural areas stood at 362 billion yuan, down 7.7 percent.

Grouped by consumption patterns, the revenue of restaurant and food services was 230.7 billion yuan, down 31.1 percent, and the retail sales of goods were 2.59 trillion yuan, down 4.6 percent. The retail sales of goods for basic living grew rapidly. Among retail sales by businesses above designated size, those of grain, oil and food and those of beverages grew 18.2 percent and 12.9 percent respectively.

Online retail sales were active. National online retail sales in the first four months reached 3.07 trillion yuan, up 1.7 percent year-on-year, while those in the first quarter dropped 0.8 percent. Of the total, the online retail sales of physical goods grew 8.6 percent, 2.7 percentage points higher than in the first quarter. And they accounted for 24.1 percent of the total retail sales of consumer goods, which were 0.5 percentage points higher than in the first quarter.