1st LD: China’s retail sales up 7.6 pct in October

BEIJING, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) — China’s retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of the country’s consumption strength, climbed 7.6 percent year on year in October, official data showed Wednesday.
The pace of growth accelerated from a rise of 5.5 percent registered in September, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Total retail sales of consumer goods topped 38.54 trillion yuan (about 5.37 trillion U.S. dollars) in the January-October period, up 6.9 percent from one year earlier, according to the NBS.