China's retail sales of consumer goods in 2009 are expected to expand around 15.6 percent from last year, said an official with the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on Tuesday.

Stimulus programs to send home appliances and automobiles to the countryside and trade-in policies for both urban and rural consumers have boosted domestic consumption, said Wang Bingnan, head of the MOC market operation department, at a press conference in Beijing.

By the end of October, the "home appliances to the countryside" program yielded 120 billion yuan (17.58 billion U.S. dollars) in retail sales for home appliance manufacturers, said Wang. The trade-in program created another 10 billion yuan in the sale of new cars and home appliances by Nov 24.

China's per capita value of GDP has exceeded 3,000 U.S. dollars, which will lead to rapid growth of its car market, said Chang Xiaocun, head of MOC market construction department.

"The ministry is going to improve on policies to further encourage the development of auto consumption, since the market potentials are huge," he said.

The nationwide retail sales grew 15.3 percent year on year in January-October to 10.14 trillion yuan. 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, according to the data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics.