Home Appliances Sales Growth Ranked First in Residential Consumption

The Ministry of Commerce’s monitoring data for key retail enterprises showed that sales of home appliances in China increased by 11.1% in 2013, an increase of 12.2 percentage points from 2012, and sales growth and year-on-year growth ranked first in residential consumption.

Recently, the Ministry of Commerce held a regular press conference. Shen Danyang, the spokesperson of the press conference, said at the meeting that in 2013, the overall consumer market in China was slowing down, stabilizing, and accelerating. According to the monitoring of the Ministry of Commerce, from January to December, sales of 3,000 key retailers increased by 8.9%, an acceleration of 0.6 percentage points over the previous year. It is worth noting that online shopping sales increased by 31.9%, which was 21.6, 23.6 and 24.4 percentage points higher than department stores, supermarkets and specialty stores respectively.

Among them, in the consumer market, residential consumption steadily rebounded, and sales of home appliances, furniture, construction and decoration materials increased by 11.1%, 8.7%, and 6.2%, respectively. The growth rate was 12.2, 5.3, and 1.2 percentage points higher than the previous year respectively.

By region, sales in the central region grew fastest, at 11.6%, an increase of 0.9% from 2012, which was 2.8, 3.3 and 3.9 percentage points higher than that of the western region, the eastern region and the northeast region, respectively.

Shen Danyang stated that the export industry is faced with specific difficulties such as the increase in factor costs, the appreciation of the renminbi, and the transfer of orders to other countries. Judging from the general trend, the development of foreign trade this year will not be optimistic and is unlikely to be higher than last year's level. Due to factors such as high costs, shortage of funds, and increased competition, coupled with seasonal factors and the relatively large base of the same period last year, it is expected that the import and export data in the first quarter of 2014 may still fluctuate.