Healthy growth retails defies crisis trend – Paul French

Paul French
by Fons1 via FlickrRetail in China shows a healthy growth, suggesting the country might indeed wither the global financial crisis, writes Paul French in the weekly newsletter of Access Asia.

Well, despite some slowing growth domestic consumption appears to be staying strong – pretty much everyone we’ve talked to reported very strong Golden Week sales in early October that partly make up for the sluggishness of the third quarter (always the slowest retail quarter of the year). Importantly, this was done without offering excessive discounts.
So, despite some inflation, the earthquake, the bad weather at the start of the year, the Olympics clampdown and the global recession we have still have consumption growth in excess of 20% so far this year, and it’s improving as the year goes on. Retail sales continue to grow at a very healthy level – around 23% (around 14% when adjusted for inflation). That’s better than both this time last year and the year before by a percentage point or two.

While car sales have gone down, the real estate sales are at a low and export is in the doldrums, all those symptoms are triggered off by deliberate government policies, not by failing markets. When domestic consumption is keeping the economy humming, as Paul French suggests, that might offer a partly solution for China to remain relatively healthy.

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Charles McElwee
Fons1 via Flickr