New Year market booms, luxury gift sales down

China's consumer market boomed during the first days of the Lunar New Year holiday despite falling luxury gift sales, according to the Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday.

In the first four days of the week-long Spring Festival holiday, the most important traditional holiday in China, consumer market sales expanded steadily and quickly, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

Without giving nationwide figures, the ministry said consumer market sales had risen in Beijing by 9.2 percent and in Chengdu by 13 percent year-on-year. According to the statement, sales in Shaanxi, Anhui and Henan provinces grew by 14.3 percent, 11.2 percent and 10.4 percent.

China's consumer market has boomed in spite of falling sales of luxury goods purchased as new year gifts. Sales of luxury gifts such as expensive alcoholic beverages and rare seafood have fallen sharply. Experts viewed the drop as a direct result of the central government's anti-graft and frugality campaign.

In Fuzhou, capital of the prosperous province of Fujian, a dozen shopping malls saw sales of luxury alcoholic beverages fall 70 percent year-on-year in the first four days of the holiday, and sales of rare seafood were down by 50 percent.