The country's airport retail sector is expected to experience "eruptive growth" in the next three to seven years, officials said.

"China's airport retail business is a gold mine waiting to be explored," Liu Shaocheng, policy department director of the General Administration of Civil Aviation, told the China Airport Retail Summit 2007 in Beijing yesterday.

He cited official statistics saying the total revenue of all China's airports last year was 22.85 billion yuan ($3.08 billion), but less than 40 percent came from the non-aviation sector.