SANYA, December 10./TASS/. Hainan's duty free stores sold goods worth 12.89 bln yuan (about $1.8 bln) from December 1, 2018 to the end of November 2019. According to Xinhua, the indicator is by 34% higher than the previous year.
About 3.29 mln customers visited Hainan's duty free stores during this period (increase in 20.1%). According to the customs office, more than 17 mln items od various goods were sold in December 2018-November 2019, which is by 31.87% higher than in the same period last year.
Currently there are four dury free stores on Hainan: two of them are located in the provincial administrative center Haikou, the others — in the resort cities of Sanya and Boao in the island's north-east.
By 2025, the Chinese authorities set the goal of turning Hainan into an "international center of tourism and consumption." In 2011, a pilot program for the development of duty free shops network was launched.
In the first half of 2019, the revenue of duty-free shops in Hainan increased by 26.5% to 6.6 billion yuan (about $ 960.7 million). From 2012 to 2018, the average annual growth rate of this indicator in the southern Chinese province was 28%, while on the average in China it did not exceed 11%. In 2018, Hainan’s duty-free stores' sales reached 10.1 billion yuan (about $ 1.47 billion), which accounts for 26% of national revenue.
In 2018, over 76 million Chinese and foreign tourists visited Hainan.