China's retail sales in October rose 16.2percent year on year to 1.17 trillion yuan (171 billion U.S. dollars), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Wednesday.

The rise was 5.8 percentage points lower than that a year earlier, but 0.7 percentage points higher than that in September, NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun said at a press conference.

The first 10 months saw a 15.3-percent growth of retail sales to 10.14 trillion yuan year on year. The rate was 6.7 percentage points down from the same period last year, and 0.2 percentage points up from the first nine months this year, Sheng said.