Prices fall for necessities including meat, poultry, eggs and vegetables

Prices of such necessities as grain, oil, meat, poultry, eggs and vegetables have fallen back since March, with wholesale vegetable prices falling 16.5 percent on March 27 from the end of February and pork prices dropping 7.4 percent from their mid-February highs, China's Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday.

Retail sales in mid-March were up seven percent from mid-February, sales on some e-commerce platforms were up more than 30 percent, and sales at department stores were back up to about 50 percent from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, small-scale taxpayers in central Hubei Province were exempted from VAT from March to May, while the Value Added Tax (VAT) rate of small-scale taxpayers in other provinces was reduced from three percent to one percent. Enterprises with monthly income of less than 100,000 yuan and quarterly income of less than 300,000 yuan are exempted from VAT.