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Wednesday May 7, 2:27 PM
South Korea's Retail Sales up 8.5% in MarchSEOUL, May 7 Asia Pulse - Retail sales in South Korea grew 8.5 per cent in March from a year earlier, as consumers spent more on food and car fuels, a report showed Wednesday. South Korea's retail sales amounted to 20.9 trillion won (US$20.4 billion) in March, compared with 19.25 trillion won in the same period a year earlier, according to the report by the Korea National Statistical Office (NSO). The growth is larger than the previous month's 7.2 per cent gain.
The NSO attributed the yearly sales growth to increased spending on food and nondurable goods including car fuels and cosmetics, which was up 2 per cent and 11.2 per cent, respectively. Sales of cars and other durable items also expanded 9.1 per cent over the cited period, it added. Department store sales gained 5.2 per cent last month annually to 1.65 trillion won, while sales at large-sized discount outlets jumped 9.5 per cent to 2.53 trillion won, the office said. Sales at stores without offline shop space such as cyber shopping malls totaled 2.01 trillion won, up 12.1 per cent from a year ago. Consumer spending is taking on more importance these days as the government strives to resuscitate the local economy, whose growth pace is feared to have reached its peak and turned downward. In the first quarter of this year, the South Korean economy grew 0.7 per cent from the previous quarter, the slowest pace in more than three years. The government is trying to stimulate domestic demand mainly by reducing taxes. (Yonhap)
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