China’s April retail sales growth of 5.1% misses expectations as consumption remains a worry

Citizens are shopping at a supermarket in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu province, on March 9, 2024. China’s retail sales growth slowed in April, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed Monday, signaling that consumption remains a worry for the world’s second-largest economy. Retail sales rose 5.1% from a year earlier in April, missing analysts’ estimates of 5.5% growth, according to a Reuters poll. Sales had grown by 5.9% in the previous month. Industrial output grew 6.1% year on year in April, stronger than analysts’ expectations for a 5.5% rise, while slowing down from the 7.7% jump in March, indicating…