China is gradually shrugging off the negative impact of the pandemic, as official data showed that retail sales in the first two months of 2023 grew.
The news comes on the back of China’s optimisation of its Covid-19 response and Chinese experts have predicted that retail sales will continue to increase, given the concrete government measures put in place to boost consumption.
Retail sales totalled $1.12 trillion in January and February, a year-on-year increase of 3.5 per cent, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday. Retail sales fell 1.8 per cent in December.
“The rebound of consumption was a major bright spot of China’s economic operations in the first two months of this year,” Fu Linghui, a spokesperson of the NBS, told a press conference in Beijing.
