(IDEX Online) - Jewelry sales slumped in Hong Kong during March, as the city state's economy shrank by almost nine per cent.Overall sales of jewelry, watches and clocks, and valuable gifts plummeted 75.2 per cent in year-on-year statistics published by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. It does not break the figure down further.The sector suffered the worst losses, followed by clothes and shoes, and medicines and cosmetics. Sales were already in severe decline, because of pro-democracy protests and the US-China trade war when the COVID-19 pandemic forced it into lockdown and halting the tourism industry, which accounts for half of all retail sales.Retail activity across all sectors for the first quarter of 2020 registered the sharpest decline on record - down 36.9 percent year-on-year.Hong Kong's GDP contracted 8.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, the largest recorded decline since 1974.