HAIKOU /China/, January 30. /TASS/. Total sales of goods at duty free stores in the southern Chinese province of Hainan for the weekend on the occasion of the Lunar New Year (January 21 to 27) amounted to 1.56 billion yuan (about $234 million), up 5.9% from the same period in 2022. This was reported by Xinhua News Agency, citing Haikou City Customs.
About 157 thousand customers visited duty free stores in the province over this period. Growth of the corresponding figure in annual terms was 9.5%. Average expenses per person in duty-free stores on the island at that time amounted to almost 10 thousand yuan (about $1,492).
Local authorities pay special attention to the development of duty-free stores on holidays and traditionally publish statistics on the volume of sales. According to official forecasts, during the entire period of mass traveling of citizens in the country in 2023, which began on January 7 and will last 40 days, Hainan will be visited by about 8.7 million tourists, which is 13.6% more than the indicator of the same period in 2022.
Hainan authorities launched a pilot program to create a developed duty-free network in 2011. There are duty-free stores on the island in the provincial capital Haikou, the resort of Sanya, as well as in the coastal town of Boao in the Qionghai district in the northeast of Hainan and in Wanning.
The provincial authorities increased the quota per person for purchases at the province's duty-free stores from 30,000 to 100,000 yuan (from $4,200 to $14,200) on July 1, 2020. The list of duty-free goods was expanded from 38 to 45 items. On February 2 last year in Hainan also launched a mail delivery service for duty-free goods for customers leaving the island.
In 2022, the total volume of duty-free sales in Hainan amounted to 48.71 billion yuan ($7.2 billion). In 2021 the figure exceeded 60 billion yuan (about $ 8.9 billion). This year, the island's authorities expect that this figure will exceed 80 billion yuan ($ 11.9 billion).