HANOI, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's total retail sales and services revenue crossed 309.3 trillion Vietnamese dong (13.75 billion U.S. dollars) in February 2017, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO) on Friday.
The figure presented a 6.5 percent decrease from the previous month, but posted a 7.2 percent year-on-year rise, said the GSO.
The office attributed the drop in retail sales and services revenue in February to the fact that local people had spent a lot during the Lunar New Year holiday in January.
That's the reason why the total retail sales in February dropped 7.6 percent compared to January.
In the first two months of 2017, Vietnam saw total retail sales and services revenue of 604 trillion Vietnamese dong (26.84 billion U.S. dollars), up 5.6 percent year-on-year.
Among which, retail sales experienced a relatively high growth of 9.7 percent compared to the same two-month period last year, to reach 487.4 trillion Vietnamese dong (21.66 billion U.S. dollars).
Products that saw an increase in sales include food and foodstuff (up 10 percent year-on-year), garments and textiles (9.6 percent), transport (9.4 percent) and home appliances (7.7 percent) as well as culture, tourism and educational products (5.1 percent).
Meanwhile, the hotel-restaurant sector also posted a low growth rate of 4.2 percent in two-month period, compared to the same period in 2016.
