Retail sales in both Hong Kong and the mainland grew less quickly during the Lunar New Year – a big shopping season – than last year, but analysts are not sounding the alarm.

Sales in China during the seven days to 28 January grew 16.2 percent year on year to CNY470 billion (USD74.51 million) according to the Ministry of Commerce. In the period last year, sales grew 19 percent compared with that in 2010.

Auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has said it expects retail-sector growth on the mainland to slow to a single-digit pace for the whole of this year, compared with last.

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