Beijingers spent at least 695 million yuan (95 million U.S. dollars) on purchasing commodities on Wednesday for the Lunar New Year, a business consulting company said on Thursday.

The figure means that on just that one day, 2,902 department stores and supermarkets in the capital saw sales rise 13.7 percent year-on-year, according to the Beijing Commercial Information and Consultation Center, which is affiliated with the Municipal Bureau of Commerce.

The new holiday schedule launched late last year, which allows Chinese to take a day off on the eve of the Spring Festival, was believed to be a major factor in the sales boom.

The survey, conducted on the eve of the Year of the Rat, found that supermarket sales rose 28.7 percent, department store sales rose 20.6 percent, and food and beverage suppliers' sales increased 5.8 percent.

Crowds were waiting in line just to get carts at the WalMart outlet in Xuanwu District on Wednesday afternoon. Frozen dumplings sold well in most supermarkets as more Chinese chose to skip the complicated process of preparing the traditional main dish of the New Year's eve dinner.

Clothes and jewelry accounted for at least 30 percent of the sales in many big department stores, the survey found.

The 56 outlets of the Chaoshifa supermarket chain had 190,000 customers on Wednesday, who spent four times as much as on an ordinary day.

(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2008)