BEIJING - China's consumer spending posted a double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2015, despite mounting pressures the country is facing.

China's retail sales rose 10.6 percent year on year in the first three months to 7.07 trillion yuan ($1.15 trillion), said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday.

However, the growth slowed from an annual 12 percent increase in 2014. In March, retail sales rose 10.2 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 10.7 percent increase in the Jan-Feb period.

The bureau said online retail sales of goods and services surged 41.3 percent from one year earlier to 760.7 billion yuan in the first quarter.

The NBS also announced that China's economic growth slowed to 7 percent in the first quarter this year, down from 7.3 percent in the last quarter of 2014.