China goes shopping for economic reason
beijing — China is turning to shopping malls and convenience stores to better gauge spending in the world’s largest consumer market, the latest step toward upgrading its economic indicators.
The gauges measure operations for those businesses on a scale of zero to 100, in which 50 is the dividing line between improving and deteriorating conditions, with sub-gauges that include manager expectations and the overall business environment, the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Thursday. It will publish the data in the first month of each quarter to reflect activity in the prior three-month period.
“As China’s retail sales keep expanding, innovating and updating at a faster pace, shopping malls and convenience stores stand out as the most rapidly developing brick-and-mortar models,” Sun Jiwen, a ministry spokesman, said at a briefing in Beijing.
The new readings show the government pushing ahead with efforts to track to consumption, which is increasingly replacing smokestack industries as the dominant economic driver. Consumption contributed 77.2 per cent to economic expansion in the first quarter, up from 64.6 percent the prior year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The mall index covers 58 cities in 26 provinces, while the convenience store indicator is compiled from surveys conducted in more than 30 cities, the ministry said.
The ministry has contracted with the China Chain Store and Franchise Association to compile the index, Sun said. — Bloomberg