China's retail sales of consumer goods rose 16.3 percent year on year to 4.2922 trillion yuan (657.29 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Friday.

Sheng Laiyun, spokesman with the NBS, said that the retail sales of March grew 17.4 percent from a year earlier, and edged up 1.34 percent from February.

Urban retail sales of consumer goods grew 16.4 percent to 3.7248 trillion yuan in the first quarter, while retail sales in rural areas rose 15.8 percent to 567.4 billion yuan from a year earlier, Sheng said.