China's retail sales of consumer goods in the first quarter rose 20.6 percent year on year to 2,555.5 billion yuan (about 365 billion U.S. dollars), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday.

The growth was 5.7 percentage points higher than that in the same 2007 period, said the NBS spokesman Li Xiaochao at a press conference.

Domestic sales accelerated and both urban and rural consumption gained rapidly, said Li.

Retail sales in urban China soared 21.2 percent to 1,737.7 billion yuan, while that in regions at and below the county level surged 19.3 percent to 817.8 billion yuan.

Among the sales by wholesale and retail businesses above designated size, vehicles, petroleum and petroleum products, furniture and jewelries all saw sales grow by more than 30 percent year on year.

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2008)