China's retail sales of consumer goods in April rose 22.0 percent year on year to 814.2 billion yuan (about US$116 billion), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.

That brings China's retail sales of consumer goods in the first four months of this year to 3.3697 trillion yuan, up 21.0 percent, compared with 20.6 percent growth rate recorded in the first quarter of this year.

Zhang Liqun, an economist of the Development Research Center (DRC) of the State Council, or the cabinet, said the April retail sales figure represents an increase of 6.5 percentage points year-on-year, including the inflation factor, which stood at 5.5 percentage points higher. The real growth would be only one percentage point higher year-on-year if the inflation factor was deducted, indicating price rises are stable in general, Zhang said.

Retail sales of consumer goods in April in urban areas were up 22.9 percent to 555.9 billion yuan, while the retail sales of consumer goods at county level or below totaled 258.3 billion yuan, up 20.1 percent. The retail sales of food and cooking oils were up 36.3 percent, followed by meat and eggs, 30.8 percent and jewellery made of gold, silver and precious stone, 41.0 percent, automobile, 25.7 percent, crude oil and related refined products, 45.4 percent. China's consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, rose 8.5 percent year-on-year in April, compared with 8.3 percent in March and a nearly 12-year-high of 8.7 percent in February.

China's central bank moved to raise the reserve requirement ratio for commercial banks by 0.5 percentage point on Monday, lifting China's reserve requirement ratio to a new high of 16.5 percent as of May 20.

China has hiked interest rates six times and the reserve requirement ratio 14 times since last year to curb inflation and prevent economic overheating.

(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2008)