Sales of home appliances to rural areas From January to May 2011 totaled 45.23 million units, hitting 109.5 billion yuan, up by 71% and 103% year on year respectively, said the Ministry of Commerce on its website on Tuesday.

In May, a total of 5.78 million units were sold to rural areas with the sales value of 15.3 billion yuan, up by 0.9% and 21.8% year on year respectively. By the end of May, the accumulated sales reached 160 million units with the value of 351.3 billion yuan, with the total subsidy of 40.75billion yuan.

By commodity, sales of refrigerators and color TV sets ranked the first and second nationwide, accounting for 60% of the total sales. Refrigerator and color TV set are hot sales at the beginning of summer, sales value for both up by over 100% than a month earlier. By region, there are five provinces whose sales value exceeded 1 billion yuan, such as Shandong and Anhui. Sales value of Shandong in May amounted to 2.11 billion yuan, accounting for 15% of total.