New Year's retail sales open with a bang

Retail sales on the first three days of 2009 rose 13 percent year-on-year, showing the government's efforts to spur domestic demand to prevent an economic slowdown are yielding results.

The country's top 1,000 retailers earned a cumulative revenue of 12.5 billion yuan ($1.83 billion) on the first three days of the year, according to a Ministry of Commerce survey, released yesterday.

Daily necessities, including food, and clothes, shoes and home appliances sold at a discount recorded good sales, it said. Some cities did exceptionally well. Tianjin saw a dozen of its major retail shops record a 100 percent rise in sales to 200 million yuan.