THE country’s investment in property development went down 2.7% year on year in the first four months of 2022, compared with a 0.7% gain seen in the first quarter, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed yesterday. The total property investment in the period stood at 3.92 trillion yuan (US$578 billion), the NBS said. In terms of value, commercial housing sales fell 29.5% to 3.78 trillion yuan during the four-month period, compared with a 22.7% decline in the first three months. Retail sales of consumer goods, a significant indicator of China’s consumption strength, went down 0.2% year on year to 13.81 trillion yuan in the January-April period, official data showed. In April alone, retail sales declined 11.1% from a year ago to 2.95 trillion yuan. “The decline of retail sales in April was mainly due to the short-term impact of COVID-19,” said NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui. China’s value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, went up 4% year on year in the first four months of this year, NBS data showed. The figure was 2.5 percentage points lower than that in the January-March period, the NBS said. China’s average surveyed urban unemployment rate stood at 5.7% in the first four months of this year, official data showed. (Xinhua) | 